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wikipedia sez...
Enigma is a musical project started by
Michael Cretu and his wife Sandra Cretu in
1990. Michael is both the composer and the
producer; Sandra often provides vocals on
Enigma tracks. The pair have also worked
together under the name Sandra. Five studio
albums have been produced under the name of
the project and a sixth one is currently in
production, slated to be released in late
2006.
History
From the late 70s onwards, Michael Cretu
already had his own music career on his hands
and apart from several collaboration efforts
with several other musicians, he also
contributed to his wife's albums. Before
Enigma, he released a number of albums under
his own name but they all were not
particularly successful sales-wise. Cretu
revealed in an interview that he believed
that his ideas were soon running out at that
point.
It was then that Cretu plotted the creation
of Enigma as a 10 year project. Ditching his
old habits and rules, he headed onto a
different direction and in December 1990, he
came up with the project's groundbreaking
debut album, MCMXC a.D.. The album was
Cretu's first commercial success through
the single "Sadeness (Part I)",
which juxtaposed Gregorian chants and sexual
overtones over a dance beat that was highly
peculiar to the ears of the public at that
time.
Before the album was released, Cretu was
cautious of the response towards the upcoming
album, decided to forgo mentioning his and
most of the personnel's real name and
credited himself as Curly M.C., while the
album sleeve contained little information
about the background of the project,
furthering the mystery and enigma about the
creators of the album and leading to
speculation whether Enigma was a band, a
person or a group.
In 1993, Cretu was given an offer by
producers to compose the full soundtrack of
the motion picture, Sliver but he was unable
to accept the offer. Instead, he came up with
"Carly's Song" and
"Carly's Loneliness", which
was used in the movie and credited in the
motion picture soundtrack as well.
In the following year, The Cross of Changes
was released and it received about the same,
if not a even larger and better response from
the public. However, both of the albums also
hitched up lawsuits over the issue of
sampling from other music sources.
In 1996, Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi!
(French for "The King is dead, long
live the king!") was released.
Cretu's idea was that this third album was
the child of the following two albums, and
therefore included familiar elements of
Gregorian chants and tribal chants in it.
Though the album was still meticulously
crafted by Cretu, it didn't manage to
surpass the acheivements of the previous
albums. Originally three singles were
scheduled to be released from the album, but
the last one ("The Roundabout")
was cancelled for unknown reasons in 1998.
The 1999 release of The Screen Behind the
Mirror included samples from Carl Orff's
Carmina Burana on four tracks on the album.
This time, the all too familiar Gregorian
chants were toned down a lot, but still
Shakuhachi flutes and other traditional
Enigma signatures remain. Only
"Gravity of Love" and
"Push the Limits" were released
as singles from the album. Ruth-Ann Boyle
from the band Olive and also Andru Donalds
mark their first appearance on the Enigma
project.
In 2001, Cretu released a new single called
"Turn Around" together with
Love Sensuality Devotion: The Greatest Hits
and Love Sensuality Devotion: The Remix
Collection to end what he considers to be the
first chapter of Enigma. A light show was
held at the Munich Planetarium in conjuction
of the release of the compilation albums.
2003's Voyageur was considered a total
makeover for the project. Practically the
famous Shakuhachi flutes, ethnic and/or
Gregorian chants and all notable Enigma
signature techniques were removed entirely
from the album. From a statistical point of
view, every Enigma studio album has roughly
half less of its sales compared to the
previous release.
On August 28, 2005, Enigma's management
(Crocodile-Music.de) announced the release of
the project's latest single, "Hello
and Welcome". The single was
originally slated to be released in October,
however it has since been moved to November
25, 2005 and now it has been postponed to an
unknown date. Information was also provided
suggesting that the next studio album will
probably be released near the end of 2006.
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