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Romanian musicianLOS ANGELES (AP) — On Ibiza, an island off the east coast of Spain, music producer Michael Cretu lives m a world of paradox.“You can have one of the craziest nightclubs in Europe there and then 10 minutes away you can drive in the car and see people who work in the fields like they were for 300 years, he said. “They can’t read, they can’t write, they have no electricity, nothing.Cretu, raised in Romania and educated in Germany, said that kind of environment on the Mediterranean island helps his creativity.There, Cretu created his own paradox. He weaved an unusual concoction of medieval Gregorian chants and seething French vocals onto a modem dance beat for the debut album “MCMXC a.D“ by Enigma, his one-man ensemble of synthesizers and electronically produced sounds.“Paradoxes are exciting,” hesaid. “I mean middle-of-the-road is always without any excitement.The album’s atmospheric, at times hypnotic, sound has a New Age ring. But the album has received acclaim in the pop world with the track “Sadeness Part I peaking at No. 5 on the Billboard's Hot 100 chart.“Sadeness and the follow-up single, “Mea Culpa Part II,” topped the charts in Europe.Some Catholic-backed stations in Europe banned “Sadeness” after rumors surfaced that the chanting contained satanic material. Cretu denied that, saying he has no desire to offend any religious belief.The song’s lyrics pose questions about virtue and vice, faith and sacrilege, and love and lust to the Marquis de Sade, the 18th-century writer whose works exploring sexual violence and domination led to his 35-year imprisonment.“Maybe part of us think he is a pervert, other ones say he was a very important writer of French literature, the 34-year-old Cretu said in a recent interview.“He wanted his wTitings to be revenge on the people around him to make them suffer, but it was only his imagination,” Cretu said. “That’s why I also called the song ‘Sadeness’ — it’s between sadness and Sade because I mean it’s a very sadlife if you are to spend most of your life in prison.”As if the Marquis didn’t pose enough of a paradox, Cretu added the Gregorian chants after pondering the Catholic Church and its opposition to birth control in undendeveloped countries.(The pope) must know the situation of the Third World is dramatic, Cretu said. “And the next year we’ll have much more children or they’ll die because they’ll have I don’t know what sickness. I mean it’s really irresponsible what he’s doing.”The bespectacled Cretu, dressed casually in a red silk shirt and black cotton pants, appears to be more of a philosopher spouting his ideology than the music man responsible for producing the albums of his wife, pop singer Sandra. Her albums have sold more than 25 million throughout Europe. |“I’m kind of an inventor, searching always for somethingnew,” he explained.With Enigma, Cretu has produced a one-man show with nearly the entire album created by synthesizers and keyboards in a studio where he fashioned the sounds of rain, thunder and jungle clamor for the moody tracks.The Gregorian chants were supplied by a friend, who recorded them in Romanian churches. Sandra provided the lusty female vocals.When the album was introduced to the United States earlier this year, it was doused in a veil of secrecy. A buyer only knew that it was recorded bv Enigma, a group making its U.S. debut.“I really wanted the music to speak it’s own language and that’s why I asked my record company not to do any promotion,” he said.The compact disc’s cover showed only a monk and the sleeve revealed no further answers except naming song-writing credits to Curly M.C. and Father Gregorian.“The M.C. are my initials and Curly is nothing else than a translation of my family name from Romanian to English — Cretu means curly,” he explained. It’s very simple and I also have curly hair.”Cretu said the enigmatic approach was also in part a rebellion against an industry where marketing and packaging is smothering the music itself.
Newspaper Details
Kalispell Daily Inter Lake
Kalispell, Montana, US
Sun, Aug 04, 1991
Page 35
Full Page
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USA 13 Nov 2020
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