On Thursday night, James Blake took to his BBC Radio 1 Residency with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, closing the show with a cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” and it’s the best thing you’ll hear today. It’s a chilling version that modernizes the song with a nice synth line and Blake and Vernon’s vocals haunting in harmony, while still keeping Paul & Art’s original in tact. And wow this duo nails it. Can we please have more of this?
Vernon is rumored to appear on Blake’s forthcoming, highly anticipated third LP Radio Silence.
Blake said that he recorded the song to cope with the loss of a friend on New Year’s Eve. “One New Year’s Eve I had a friend of mine sadly pass away, and previous to that, the things he had been saying to me sounded like an attempt to reach out to people,” James said. “I thought that after that happened this seemed to be the only song that could represent how I felt at the time.”
Listen below:
