Today (July 16) marks the 80th anniversary of the Trinity test, during which a team of U.S. scientists led by J. Robert Oppenheimer detonated the world’s first atomic bomb in the deserts of New Mexico. To memorialize the occasion, Kronos Quartet recorded two star-studded covers of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” which Dylan famously wrote following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Both renditions are out now via Red Hot Organization. Listen below.
The first version, “Hard Rain,” features Iggy Pop, Willie Nelson, Allison Russell, Deerhoof’s Satomi Matsuzaki, the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt, Tanya Tagaq, Laurie Anderson, Slowspin, and others. Kronos Quartet provided the musical accompaniment alongside members of Belle & Sebastian, Deerhoof, Patti Smith’s band, and a backing choir that included Frankie Cosmos’ Greta Kline and Xenia Rubinos.
“Hard Rain (Drone),” meanwhile, is a spoken-word take on Dylan’s original, with contributions from—among others—Matsuzaki, Merritt, Anderson, Pop, Nelson, Ringo Starr, Ocean Vuong, Sampa the Great, Sleaford Mods, Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and, as a member of the instrumental ensemble, Shahzad Ismaily.
Later this evening, Kronos Quartet and Allison Russell will stage a performance at the David Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago as part of a conference hosted by the Nobel Laureate Assembly for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
