Enigma
(1990-Present, Ages 16 and Up)
5/5/17
|
|
|
Throughout the mid-90’s, there was a series of commercials for a New Age compilation series of CD’s known as Pure Moods. Not counting the various spin-offs, there were four in total, all of which I used to own. I have this series to thank for providing my introduction to New Age, which, as I’ve mentioned, is among my favorite genres of music. In fact, between all of them, I learned of many artists whose works I still collect and listen to today. But unlike all the other artists who have provided a song for Pure Moods, this one has the honor of providing at least one song for every volume in the main collection. I remember when I had decided that I wanted to start buying his albums. I figured I’d begin with his Greatest Hits collection in order to get a more comprehensive taste of his work. I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I almost ended up not buying it due to the suggestive acronym of the album’s title: LSD. But this refers not to the drug but to the words Love, Sensuality, Devotion. I learned later as I matured that this has a highly symbolic and profound double meaning, as do many of this artist’s works.
Michael Cretu had a passion for music from a very early age; it was when he first heard The Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers” that he was inspired to pursue a career in Pop music. After his more formal musical studies, first in his native Bucharest, Romania, and then in Paris, France and Frankfurt, Germany, Cretu went on to be creator, producer, and performer, of numerous projects and songs, both solo and for other prevalent European Pop artists of the era. One of these artists, Sandra, would go on to be his music partner and his wife for twenty years.
Now, one might not think that a musician with that sort of background could successfully make a transition into a genre like New Age, but it was from Cretu’s past experience that the distinctive style of Enigma was born: the careful blending of beats of more modern genres, like Dance, Hip-Hop, Rock, and Dubstep, with elements and samples of older, more traditional pieces and sounds. The conception for Enigma came from Cretu’s desire to do away with the common rules and habits of music and create something entirely different. His influence is such that future New Age artists would follow his lead and use the term “Project” as opposed to “Band” to differentiate their own music as such.
Though he faced two copyright lawsuits in ’94 and ’98, unfortunately forever losing his intended anonymity, this wouldn’t stop his practice of sampling other music to enrich his songs, and at least now I can pay him the proper respect I feel he deserves. His first album, MCMXC a.D., makes heavy use of Gregorian chants—part of which is what made “Sadeness (Part I)” one of Enigma’s best-known songs; The Cross of Changes has a strong ethnic vibe due to its inclusion of Mongolian and Native American tribal chants, like in another massive hit, “Return to Innocence”; and some songs from The Screen Behind the Mirror feature samples from one of the most famous pieces in classical music: “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, as heard in “Gravity of Love”.
His first album, MCMXC a.D., makes heavy use of Gregorian chants—part of which is what made “Sadeness (Part I)” one of Enigma’s best-known songs; The Cross of Changes has a strong ethnic vibe due to its inclusion of Mongolian and Native American tribal chants, like in another massive hit, “Return to Innocence”; and some songs from The Screen Behind the Mirror feature samples from one of the most famous pieces in classical music: “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, as heard in “Gravity of Love”.
This unique style of mixing genres has led Cretu to be called an “alchemist in sound”. Similarly to words like “wizard”, “alchemist” always brought to me connotations of magic and wisdom, but not necessarily the kind that is out of the reach of man. I’m sure it’s not just nostalgia that drives us to preserve music that is centuries old; sometimes there is a depth and a soul within it that today can be near impossible to imitate, let alone recreate. Moreover, the music in question may speak of subjects that for some may be hard to comprehend if not completely taboo, whether in the past or even now. The fact that the term “enigma” is synonymous with words like “mystery”, “riddle”, “puzzle”, or “conundrum”, ties in brilliantly with this idea.
I think this is also why Enigma has such a vibe of intimacy to it as well. Some of Enigma’s songs are intimate in the more erotic sense—not in the deliberately controversial way of, say, Nine Inch Nails' “Closer”, mind you--but some titles alone, like “Principles of Lust”, “Smell of Desire”, and “Hell’s Heaven," suggest music that I could understand adult listeners actually making love to. Another kind of intimacy that I see and hear comes from the representation of anything and everything that we as a sentient species have ever felt or achieved. Just like the music, much of the cover and booklet art for Enigma’s albums has sampled, reworked, or has taken inspiration from significant artistic or scholarly works. For instance, on the cover of The Platinum Collection is Da Vinci’s famous 1489 painting, “Lady with an Ermine”; human bodies overlaid with detailed textbook sketches of both pieces of machinery and numbered anatomical parts make up the cover of Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi!; A Posteriori, inspired by the documented future Andromeda–Milky Way galaxy collision, is presented with the calculated symmetry of a cartographer’s map; and The Fall of a Rebel Angel—a literal and metaphorical spiritual successor to MCMXC a.D. and containing elements from Dante’s Inferno, The Old Testament, and other religious and philosophical works—was painted by famed German artist and art forger, Wolfgang Beltracchi: an agonizing depiction of a man plummeting as if to his death, his screaming face a mixture of grief and torment, his body rigid with pain, his wings shredded and broken.
If 2002 is dreamlike in the sense of fairy tales and lullabies, and Amethystium is dreamlike in the sense of nature and darkness, then Enigma is so in the sense of humanity in all its physical and emotional extremes—and therein lays the true strength of Cretu’s musical vision. It’s almost as if, through Enigma, he is implying that there is little difference between what separates us from animals and what makes us animals: our greatest noble and intellectual achievements—art, religion, science, politics, philosophy—intertwined with our most primitive drives and instincts—hunger, fear, lust, hate, ecstasy.
CREDITS:
All images, audio, and links belong to their respective owners; no copyright infringement is intended.
MAIN THEME:
“The Call” – Briand Morrison and Roxann Berglund
Michael Cretu had a passion for music from a very early age; it was when he first heard The Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers” that he was inspired to pursue a career in Pop music. After his more formal musical studies, first in his native Bucharest, Romania, and then in Paris, France and Frankfurt, Germany, Cretu went on to be creator, producer, and performer, of numerous projects and songs, both solo and for other prevalent European Pop artists of the era. One of these artists, Sandra, would go on to be his music partner and his wife for twenty years.
Now, one might not think that a musician with that sort of background could successfully make a transition into a genre like New Age, but it was from Cretu’s past experience that the distinctive style of Enigma was born: the careful blending of beats of more modern genres, like Dance, Hip-Hop, Rock, and Dubstep, with elements and samples of older, more traditional pieces and sounds. The conception for Enigma came from Cretu’s desire to do away with the common rules and habits of music and create something entirely different. His influence is such that future New Age artists would follow his lead and use the term “Project” as opposed to “Band” to differentiate their own music as such.
Though he faced two copyright lawsuits in ’94 and ’98, unfortunately forever losing his intended anonymity, this wouldn’t stop his practice of sampling other music to enrich his songs, and at least now I can pay him the proper respect I feel he deserves. His first album, MCMXC a.D., makes heavy use of Gregorian chants—part of which is what made “Sadeness (Part I)” one of Enigma’s best-known songs; The Cross of Changes has a strong ethnic vibe due to its inclusion of Mongolian and Native American tribal chants, like in another massive hit, “Return to Innocence”; and some songs from The Screen Behind the Mirror feature samples from one of the most famous pieces in classical music: “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, as heard in “Gravity of Love”.
His first album, MCMXC a.D., makes heavy use of Gregorian chants—part of which is what made “Sadeness (Part I)” one of Enigma’s best-known songs; The Cross of Changes has a strong ethnic vibe due to its inclusion of Mongolian and Native American tribal chants, like in another massive hit, “Return to Innocence”; and some songs from The Screen Behind the Mirror feature samples from one of the most famous pieces in classical music: “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, as heard in “Gravity of Love”.
This unique style of mixing genres has led Cretu to be called an “alchemist in sound”. Similarly to words like “wizard”, “alchemist” always brought to me connotations of magic and wisdom, but not necessarily the kind that is out of the reach of man. I’m sure it’s not just nostalgia that drives us to preserve music that is centuries old; sometimes there is a depth and a soul within it that today can be near impossible to imitate, let alone recreate. Moreover, the music in question may speak of subjects that for some may be hard to comprehend if not completely taboo, whether in the past or even now. The fact that the term “enigma” is synonymous with words like “mystery”, “riddle”, “puzzle”, or “conundrum”, ties in brilliantly with this idea.
I think this is also why Enigma has such a vibe of intimacy to it as well. Some of Enigma’s songs are intimate in the more erotic sense—not in the deliberately controversial way of, say, Nine Inch Nails' “Closer”, mind you--but some titles alone, like “Principles of Lust”, “Smell of Desire”, and “Hell’s Heaven," suggest music that I could understand adult listeners actually making love to. Another kind of intimacy that I see and hear comes from the representation of anything and everything that we as a sentient species have ever felt or achieved. Just like the music, much of the cover and booklet art for Enigma’s albums has sampled, reworked, or has taken inspiration from significant artistic or scholarly works. For instance, on the cover of The Platinum Collection is Da Vinci’s famous 1489 painting, “Lady with an Ermine”; human bodies overlaid with detailed textbook sketches of both pieces of machinery and numbered anatomical parts make up the cover of Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi!; A Posteriori, inspired by the documented future Andromeda–Milky Way galaxy collision, is presented with the calculated symmetry of a cartographer’s map; and The Fall of a Rebel Angel—a literal and metaphorical spiritual successor to MCMXC a.D. and containing elements from Dante’s Inferno, The Old Testament, and other religious and philosophical works—was painted by famed German artist and art forger, Wolfgang Beltracchi: an agonizing depiction of a man plummeting as if to his death, his screaming face a mixture of grief and torment, his body rigid with pain, his wings shredded and broken.
If 2002 is dreamlike in the sense of fairy tales and lullabies, and Amethystium is dreamlike in the sense of nature and darkness, then Enigma is so in the sense of humanity in all its physical and emotional extremes—and therein lays the true strength of Cretu’s musical vision. It’s almost as if, through Enigma, he is implying that there is little difference between what separates us from animals and what makes us animals: our greatest noble and intellectual achievements—art, religion, science, politics, philosophy—intertwined with our most primitive drives and instincts—hunger, fear, lust, hate, ecstasy.
CREDITS:
All images, audio, and links belong to their respective owners; no copyright infringement is intended.
MAIN THEME:
“The Call” – Briand Morrison and Roxann Berglund
All other tracks are by Enigma:
“The Landing” (from LSD: Love, Sensuality, Devotion [2001])
“Sadness (Part I)” (from MCMXC a.D. [1990])
“Return To Innocence” (from The Cross of Changes [1993])
“Gravity of Love” (from The Screen Behind the Mirror [2000])
“Principles of Lust” (from MCMXC a.D. [1990])
“Smell of Desire” (from The Screen Behind the Mirror [2000])
“Hell’s Heaven” (from Seven Lives Many Faces [2008])
“Lost One” (from The Platinum Collection [2009])
“Beyond the Invisible” (from Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! [1996])
“20,000 Miles Over the Sea” (from A Posteriori [2006])
“The Omega Point” (from The Fall of a Rebel Angel [2016])
“The Cross of Changes” (from The Cross of Changes [1993])
Download the full 15-minute episode here!
Enigma on Wikipedia
Michael Cretu on Wikipedia
Michael Cretu's Official Website
Enigma's Facebook Page
Enigma on Allmusic
Enigma's Official YouTube Channel
Buy Enigma on Amazon
Buy Enigma at Barnes & Noble
Buy Enigma on EBay
^^ Back to Music, Bands, and Other Creations of Sound
“The Landing” (from LSD: Love, Sensuality, Devotion [2001])
“Sadness (Part I)” (from MCMXC a.D. [1990])
“Return To Innocence” (from The Cross of Changes [1993])
“Gravity of Love” (from The Screen Behind the Mirror [2000])
“Principles of Lust” (from MCMXC a.D. [1990])
“Smell of Desire” (from The Screen Behind the Mirror [2000])
“Hell’s Heaven” (from Seven Lives Many Faces [2008])
“Lost One” (from The Platinum Collection [2009])
“Beyond the Invisible” (from Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! [1996])
“20,000 Miles Over the Sea” (from A Posteriori [2006])
“The Omega Point” (from The Fall of a Rebel Angel [2016])
“The Cross of Changes” (from The Cross of Changes [1993])
Download the full 15-minute episode here!
Enigma on Wikipedia
Michael Cretu on Wikipedia
Michael Cretu's Official Website
Enigma's Facebook Page
Enigma on Allmusic
Enigma's Official YouTube Channel
Buy Enigma on Amazon
Buy Enigma at Barnes & Noble
Buy Enigma on EBay
^^ Back to Music, Bands, and Other Creations of Sound