(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Michael Cretu (aka Curly M.C., born in Bucharest in 1957) launched the Enigma project with the help of his wife Sandra Lauer at the end of 1990.
After graduating in 1978 from the Frankfurt Academy, he scraped by as a producer, while recording unpretentious dance-oriented electronic singles (Wild River in 1978, Moonlight Flower in 1979, both later collected on Moonlight And Flowers).
From 1983 onward his career picked up speed (Total Normal, Zeitlose Reise, Der Planet Der Verlorenen Zeit, Schwarzer Engel), but success smiled on him mainly as a producer and composer (as well as organist for Moti Special). His wife topped the charts in 1985 with Maria Magdalena. He continued to dabble under the name Theirs and then with his friend Cornelius.
After moving to Ibiza, where he owns a restaurant, Cretu created Enigma with the single Sadeness Part 1, which fused Gregorian chants and hip hop (as well as philosophically provocative lyrics in French).
The album MCMXC A.D. (Virgin, 1990) merely offers various variations on that theme. Sadeness is reprised, extended and retitled as a three-movement suite, Principles Of Lust (Gregorian chorus plus funky beat plus flute flourishes plus sensual whispers). Mea Culpa is the hedonistic version of the same idea, with hip-hop frenzy once again replacing dreamlike atmospheres. The classicizing new-age mood of Callas Went Away and the more philosophical excursion of Back To The Rivers Of Belief, again in three parts, with a finale of plainchant, bring his mystical-decadent metaphysics into focus.
The album is in fact conceived as a single piece, beginning and ending with the same theme and reusing the same sounds at different points. Cretu forges a sound at the crossroads of ambient music, world music and house that proves appealing to a very broad audience.
The second compendium of ambient arrangements, The Cross Of Changes (Charisma, 1994), boasts even more spectacular juxtapositions. The tour de force is The Eyes Of Truth, for an Arab wailer, Andean flute, Verdian chorus, and symphony orchestra. Perhaps the most striking contrast is that between the serenade of a sensual Parisian chansonnier and the solemn hymn of an Arab muezzin in Return To Innocence. Each track uses vocals and rhythm to build unsettling atmospheres, which are then embellished by ever-changing orchestral choices (African polyrhythms and electric guitar in Love You).
Age Of Loneliness (also known as Carly's Song) and Out From The Deep are the singles that capitalize on Enigmas popularity in 1994.
Cretu wrote almost all the music for Sandras albums, as well as the soundtracks for several films (Legionaire, Die Chinesische Mauer, and Sliver).
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Le Roi Est Mort Vive Le Roi! (Virgin, 1997) opens with a mesmerizing
ouverture (the title-track), amid the floating soprano voices of a requiem and
cosmic vibrations that are akin to Constance Demby's sacred symphonies,
but then indulges in the usual tricks of gregorian chanting
(Morphing Thru Time, superimposed to a melodramatic
Roger Waters-ian shout) and sinks under the weight of excessive instrumentation
(Beyond the Invisible, apocalyptic like Peter Gabriel and multi-ethnic
like Natacha Atlas).
Cretu veers towards a form of sophisticated soul ballad, his hoarse voice
imitating the great black singers of the 1950s (Why),
among echoes of Dark Side Of The Moon's living-room funk
(Shadows In Silence)
and of soothing Enya-esque melodies
(Prism of Life).
Only the solemn hymn of The Child In Us
and the equatorial reggae psychedelia of Almost Full Moon
redeem the triviality of the rest.
Too bad Cretu did not expand on the title-track.
The Screen Behind The Mirror (Virgin, 2000) recycles an old idea
(sampling Carl Orff's Carmina Burana) and little else
(Gravity of Love).
Later Enigma albums include:
Voyageur
(2003),
A Posteriori
(2006),
Seven Lives Many Faces
(2008),
The Fall of a Rebel Angel
(2016).
