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.)
One of the most dependable netlabels is Dusted Wax Kingdom, which regularly releases hip-hop instrumentals that balance old-school aesthetics with the clean aural space provided by digital technology. The music generally takes the form of lounge-oriented jazz source material that’s been cut and spliced into rhythmic, atmospheric goodness. The latest, **Ribbonmouthrabbit**’s *Follow the White Rabbit*, is no exception, and key among its cuts is “Criminal Conspiracy,” its loping beat and cycling rhythm given a bit of narrative oomph from some underworld vocal samples ([MP3](http://ia801608.us.archive.org/9/items/DWK189/Ribbonmouthrabbit_-_03_-_Criminal_Conspiracy.mp3)). Ribbonmouthrabbit is **Tamas Toth**, who’s based in Miskolc, Hungary. Much of the Dusted Wax output comes from countries once part of the Eastern Bloc. One interesting thing about that geographic concentration is that the musicians can collectively, in some way, be heard to be employing compositional approaches that post-date the fall of the Berlin Wall to, in turn, rework musical material that originated during the Cold War.
There’s a new book out about the song “Hallelujah,” Alan Light’s *The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah.”* The song was written and initially performed by Leonard Cohen, but it is best known for its other renditions, most notably the late Jeff Buckley’s, itself founded on the arrangement of an earlier version by John Cale of the Velvet Underground. In more recent years, the song has become ubiquitous, appearing regularly in the background of TV dramas and the foreground of singing competitions. As someone currently at work on [a book about an album](https://disquiet.com/2012/08/31/saw2for33third/), I was intrigued by the idea of a book simply about a single song. My college alumni magazine asked me to review it (the book’s author is a fellow alum, in fact a classmate). There are many lessons to be taken from the book, key among them something I focus on in the review’s final paragraph: