Covers have very much been on mind of late, especially as [I was reviewing a recent book about the song “Hallelujah.”](https://disquiet.com/2012/12/22/the-holy-or-the-broken-alan-light/) That song was written and initially recorded by Leonard Cohen, but was truly given life as others adopted it — to the extent that it’s arguably ownerless. The book makes the strong case that the ubiquity of “Hallelujah” can in large part be attributed to the absence of a single canonical recording.
Some ubiquity is seasonal, those songs that disappear for most of the year, and then appear briefly as the calendar dictates. **Scanner** just posted a cover of his own — not of “Hallelujah,” but of another populist bit of spiritual yearning, “Silent Night.” To the extent that there’s a vocal, it’s him, aided by **Zarina Kadirbaks**, with additional drum programming from **Poppadom BomBom**:
And (note: streaming only, unlike the Scanner above) then there’s this trinket, dating from 1979. It’s a cover of “Silent Night” by **Robert Fripp**, whose Frippertronics technique is an essential part of the development of live electronic processing. According to the YouTube page where it was posted, this first appeared as a flexi-disc in the magazine *Praxis* (volume 1, number 3), and as a Christmas card from the label EG Records. The audio here is from the King Crimson EP *Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream*, which was released in 1995. What’s especially interesting about it is hearing the composition-by-layering approach intrinsic to Frippertronics applied to a traditional melody:
Scanner cover originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/scanner](https://soundcloud.com/scanner/silent-night), and the Fripp is streaming at [youtube.com](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFAENQ2uVzs). (The latter located thanks to a Facebook post by Paul Ashby.)