How James Blake Got Leonard Cohen’s Son to Clear a Sample for “Death of Love”

Clearing a Leonard Cohen sample is not an everyday event. The late songwriter was famously guarded about his work, and permissions have been few. So when James Blake wanted the voices of Cantor Gideon Zelermyer and Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue Choir—taken from the title track of Cohen’s 2016 album You Want It Darker—for his own “Death of Love,” the outcome was uncertain. It took Cohen’s son and collaborator Adam to green-light the use. “I don’t know of Leonard Cohen ever approving a sample,” Blake told co-producer Dom Maker on BBC Radio 6 Music’s Artist In Residence. “It’s quite rare, so I was very honoured.”

The sample, which opens the track from Blake’s album Trying Times, sets a grave, liturgical tone. But the song’s unsettling atmosphere doesn’t end there. Blake and Maker layered in a dub siren gifted by dubstep producer Mala, and, in a final gesture, the Morse code of the RMS Titanic’s SOS signal. That last addition came after Blake’s partner and co-producer Jameela pushed for something more. “There was just another 15% left,” Blake recalled. The distress call, fading at the song’s close, lands without melodrama—quiet desperation, not spectacle.

The result is a track that draws a line from Blake’s post-dubstep roots to a broader songwriting tradition, without sentimentalizing either. It’s not every artist who can weave Cohen’s synagogue choir, a dubplate siren, and a century-old maritime cry for help into something that feels this restrained.