Silence

"Silence"
Single by Delerium featuring Sarah McLachlan
from the album Karma
Released	June 14, 1999 Various releases 2000
Format	12", CD
Recorded	???
Genre	Electronic dance
Length	4:06 (Album Version) 3:40 (DJ Tiesto Remix Radio Edit)
Label	Nettwerk
Writer(s)	Bill Leeb, Rhys Fulber, Sarah McLachlan
Producer	Delerium
Delerium chronology
"Duende" (1997) "Silence" (1999) "Heaven's Earth" (2000)

"Silence 2004"
Single by Delerium featuring Sarah McLachlan
from the album The Best Of
Released	November 15, 2004
Format	12", CD
Genre	Electronic dance
Length	Various
Label	Nettwerk
Producer	Various
Delerium chronology
"Truly" (2004) "Silence 2004" (2004) "Angelicus" (2007)

"Silence" is a song by the Canadian electronic music group, Delerium. The song was co-written by Canadian singer, Sarah McLachlan, and she is featured as the vocalist on the track. The song is often credited to be one of the best trance songs of all time,^[1] still playing in many clubs to this day.

Song

The original album version and subsequent radio edit of the song had a much slower tempo than the more well-known remixes and was essentially structured like a pop song, with the characteristic synthetic instrumentation of the more melodic side of ambient music — though including darker overtones, such as the prominently featured Gregorian chants. This last element often invites comparison to popular ambient/new age/world music projects of the 1990s like Enigma and Deep Forest who routinely sample chants from various ethnicities worldwide, though in contrast such vocals featured on Karma were all original recordings.^[2]

Although the original song did receive Canadian radio airplay in 1997, it was not released as a single until 1999, two years after the release of Karma, though it was only the Airscape Remix which received airplay at this time, rather than the more downtempo original version. The single prominently included remixes by DJ Tiësto, and Fade, which significantly boosted the song's proliferation through club play (particularly by influential DJs such as Paul Oakenfold) as evidenced by the single's positions on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play charts.

As a consequence, the song was largely promoted as an uptempo vocal trance song, which then influenced the marketing of the next several Delerium singles as well. Unlike most of its successors, however, "Silence" also broke into the adult top 40 radio format due to the song's club success,^[3] and through radio airplay the original version received mainstream awareness relatively greater than the remixes among club patrons.

The accompanying music video, directed by the directors collective Twobigeyes, was released in 2000 and was set to the Airscape remix. It has repeatedly been listed within the top 100 Ibiza anthems ever on online messageboards and, more recently, on MTV. The video was filmed on location in Pembrokeshire, Wales UK. The main locations are Newgale Beach, and "The Blue Lagoon" in Aberiddy.

"Silence" was the opening track on the 1999 Brokedown Palace soundtrack.

The Airscape Remix was featured in Dance Dance Revolution: EXTREME2

Re-releases

2004 saw a new release of the single as "Silence 2004", though no one song actually bears that title — the new single contained only remixes, both old and new. Of these, the new Above & Beyond remix is the most central, as the version included on the Best Of compilation released preceding the single. The other new remix was by Filterheadz; this version subsequently, in 2006, became popularly mislabelled as the nonexistent "Trentemøller 2006 Remix".

2008 saw yet another remix of this track, this time by German DJs Niels Van Gogh and Thomas Gold.

Notes and references

1. ^ Rivaldo, Joey. "Delerium - Silence 2004". about.com. http://dancemusic.about.com/od/reviews/fr/DeleriumSil2k4.htm. Retrieved 2008-11-10. 
2. ^ Hofmann, Pieter (May 26, 1997). "In a Sacred State of Mind: Delerium's Bill Leeb". Drop-D Magazine. http://dropd.com/issue/56/Delerium/index.html. Retrieved 2006-06-17. 
3. ^ Bauer, Henrik (August 14, 2005). "Bill Leeb > Noise Unit 2005 Interview". Mindphaser.com. http://www.mindphaser.com/index.php?page_id=739. Retrieved 2006-06-17. 

Trivia

The song was also used in the theatrical trailer and a scene in the film Brokedown Palace. It was also used as theme music to Antonio and Gabi's relationship in Sunset Beach