Delerium featuring Sarah McLachlan — Silence in the hands of Tiësto

Tiësto’s In Search of Sunrise remix of Silence places Sarah McLachlan’s vocal in a long-form trance arrangement, letting the song’s melancholy coexist with the momentum of a club mix.

Listen closer

The vocal is never just decoration: its return gives the instrumental passages an emotional anchor. The original is worth hearing too, as a very different context for the same song.

A song transformed for the dancefloor

Delerium's original gives Sarah McLachlan's voice a very different frame from the extended Tiësto remix. In the remix, the arrangement expands around the vocal, using repetition and longer transitions to make the song feel at home in a DJ set.

What is striking is that the emotional centre survives the change in scale. The voice retains its gravity even as the percussion and synths push forward. Hearing both versions in sequence makes the remixer's choices audible and gives proper credit to the song that made the reinterpretation possible.

For a first listen, give the remix its full running time and resist jumping straight to the vocal. The instrumental space changes the meaning of its arrival. Then return to Delerium's original to appreciate the song's own atmosphere and pacing.