Enigma "Sadeness Part 1"... the song that will never fucking die...

Haha my apologies, that crossposted EXACTLY with your response.

this song
so sexy
yet mystical

I like Mark's writing, I like "The Ethos Of Suture". But I look at music more technically, I guess, and in this article, the synapses Mark sees and the conclusions he draws are one's that interest me, and make for awesome writing, but feel rooted in critique of the past-tense. I listened to Enigma a lot when it came out, both this record and the second record, which was described by my older brother excitedly as being "all about the Indians", lol, and in comparison to other "electronic" music at the time, whether it was Jean-Michel Jarre's MIDI-oriented stuff*, or rap, or The Orb, all of which was on my 12-year-old radar, hesitantly leaving my friends in the reggae section as I slipped over to "New Age", Cretu is a progressive producer. At least, he seemed so at the time. I remember even back then caring "not at all" about the Revelations quotes, the Callas references, the "This Is The Voice Of Enigma" monologue, and instead being smitten with the synth pads, the samples, just the sound of everything. Sentiment aside, and forgiving the inescapability of it, this is some well made music. I cannot say the same about Enya, jeez.

* If you want something that sounds dated, you should listen to "En Attendant Cousteau"

Whoa, that got a little nostalgic, sorry.
But yeah, good article. I just think that decrying the track as "NAFF" is forgetting the landscape at the time.

Re: the panpipes... synth or not synth? I'm pretty sure it's just a flute, and the harmonic-heavy performance is misleading the listener into thinking that it's something "ethnic", and the flute is performed live, but then sampled, probably by an MPC-60, at a low sample rate, which explains why it sounds the way it does.

enya is amazing

Enya is amazing, but not "well made" in the same way. It's economical in the sense that it could be made with a single Radioshack keyboard and a MIDIVerb.

are any of Enigma's records worth owning?

I have MCMXC A.D. and it's decent but if this is as good as it gets...

second one is worth it

lol ok "Return to Innocence" brings back some memories

this sound really died a horrible, horrible death

Until Moby brought it back and made a bajillion dollars off of it.

I love when I open a six-year-old thread and have the same instantaneous response as I apparently did six years ago.

heyyaheyowoahhey

Return to Innocence is amazing

this sound really died a horrible, horrible death

and then, from the ashes rises:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4ITY5hGzAM

It seems the indie folks have sort of appropiated some of its feats for chillwave or dronepop or whatever the fuck it's called but I sense new age might have a comeback in the mainstream this year or maybe next. Moby could finally get his second breath of life if he plays his cards right.

Well, that last post is terrifying. I haven't heard Sadeness in the wild in a while.

bugger.

tried to open and read the mark s article linked upthread :

"Error 503 Backend fetch failed
Backend fetch failed

Guru Meditation:
XID: 96950946
"

i have decided that i am now old enough to enjoy enigma.
never used to, but on a chilled out sunday with a glass of wine, their albums totally hit the spot.
oh, and i enjoy this stuff far more than anything i have by enya.

Haha is this entire board on a collective mind-trip back to 1990 right now, or just the 2 of us?

(I’m kind of afraid of what lurks behind the cut on this thread)

some of us never left!

ha.
indeed.
basically, i read the recent pitchfork article re enya, so thought i would give the album i have a spin.
got bored within 4 tracks, then remembered i have a few enigma cds in the archive from my charity shop digs.
and yeah, enjoying them far more than i probably should.

Enya's first four albums are flawless, Watermark is better than Loveless

Freaky Trigger apparently (not) running on a broken Amiga seems appropriate.

ahh, i only have the 6th Enya album in the archive.
guess i need to address such an oversight.

Watermark is the starting point, the the Celts and Shepherd Moons... Amarantine is probably their worst album, it's very dull.

I just put MCMXC on and had almost Pavlovian response within about 20 seconds of The Voice of Enigma...

This whole thing is just so perfect - those horn hits during the second part of Sadeness - what is that reminding me of? Tom’s Diner or something?

I’m just coming over all nostalgic about goth chicks’ candlelit bedrooms in which I have lain, listening to this song - which seems a common refrain on this thread hee hee?

I am pretty sure that our Sys Admin has a thumbnail of this album as his Microsoft avatar (mine is Kraftwerk of course - trying to get through to the IT department is like, what do you want? Technologically pristine Germans of Gregorian Chants?)

LOZl, my phone just tried to autocorrect “Gregorian” to “Grebo”?!?! Knock that off!!!

*LOL not LOZI

ned on engima:

something that shouldn't exist

i keed, i keed.

Enigma less good that Enya, but that's just me....

My parents would listen to their first three albums a lot when I was a kid (presumably the fact that Michael Crețu is Romanian had something to do with it) but I can't remember a single thing about them other than NEW AGE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ib7g_6PywA

hugely enjoyable, but not exactly new age is it ?

I'd never heard that one before but it's pure nostalgia bait nonetheless.

Diminishing returns on Enigma records, but I think 3/4 of Cross of Changes is great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z18HWWX6yYM

This is really weird and confounded me when I was 10!

sade can i get your sister email why because she look intersting

― NAthaniel, Friday, July 8, 2005 3:32 PM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

OMG, The Voice and The Snake, like do you know how much joy that brought to a 20 y.o. goth who used to sit in the back pews of their mother's church and read Revelations during mass as a teenager.

One of the two Enigma dudes had an entire massive number one hit career before Enigma. He is a very, very wealthy dude. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULN3U1NjlI

Were there really "two Enigma dudes"? I thought Michael Cretu was always the main driving force behind the project, and according to Wikipedia Cornelius was only involved in Enigma from 1993 to 1996.

Cretu himself, of course, also had a fairly successful career before Enigma as a songwriter and keyboard player for the woman whom he'd eventually marry:

https://youtu.be/4jjzu1Z2RZc

The whole point of Enigma for Cretu was keeping the performers and producers behind it obscured, enigmatic if you will. But Cornelius is one of the few participants he's admitted to, and his name is all over their publishing. Also Cornelius' wealth since the 90s far exceeds what German-language pop stars generally have.

I always find it amazing, like the ways in which Euro pop and UK pop intersect, and don't?

Like, I also hang out on a messageboard for a German-language band where at least half the users are German, Austrian, etc. and many, many times, they'll mention someone who is massive, huge, like Cliff Richard-level, even their grandparents know who they are, well-known in German-language markets, but I either think of them as an obscure one-hit-wonder, or I've literally never heard of them.

I'm used to the way that US / UK ideas of who/what was "massive" does not always translate. But it is genuinely eye-opening, discovering how little exposure we get to continental pop, beyond the occasional "summer holiday jam" that somehow makes it across.

Is Peter Schilling a big deal in the German-language market? "Major Tom (Coming Home)" is so cool, I've always wondered why he never made the international charts again.

a Dutch TV programme did an interview with Schilling recently on his big hit and how it impacted his life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoJZvD39M_A

His German page on Wikipedia suggests he has about a dozen more albums and multiple other singles (and says that he suffered "burnout" after his international success) so it would seem that he was far more well-known at home.

(I always love when I go to Wiki and the English page is like 3 sentences and the German page has like 20 subsections of information.)

x-post

some of the above is addressed in the interview I linked

Out of curiosity, was there ever a "Sadness Part 2"?

― I Named Veal (nordicskilla), Friday, July 8, 2005 9:36 PM (fifteen years ago)

Question got answered in 2016:

https://youtu.be/HHdylh210Ho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHdylh210Ho

I was listening to an apple radio "lisa gerrard & similar artists" station and the intro to the album was one of the tracks, which kinda highlights how auto-generated "stations" are inevitably gonna fuck up (the first track on MCMXD being a spoken "relax and listen to this album" thing, very of its day)

the specific nostalgia of the techno-dance-electronic music of this era is incredibly rich and also beyond that the record was always a very cool pop record

now playing: the rest of MCMXC in a dark hotel where I've been living for a week

I recently became aware of the Sarah MacLachlan collected dance remixes album, which is not quite that specific nostalgia (in either time or affect), but also not a million miles away. Someone more knowledgeable than me could probably trace some throughlines.

The Sarah McLachlan/Delirium track is the exact vibe of the first Enigma album imo, if many years later