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 chant (
Gloria in Excelsis Deo). 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. 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. It was on the soundtrack for the movie
Brokedown Palace featuring
Claire Danes and
Kate Beckinsale. 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, and through radio
airplay the original version received mainstream awareness relatively greater than the remixes among club patrons. ==Music video==