Enigma - MCMXC A.D.
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Free Music Notes for MCMXC A.D.
Free Music Review: The best and number one music of the world !!!
Hit: 5 Stars
I think ENIGMA is the best. Not only that. The M C M X C a. D. is the best CD of it. The music Sadeness is so great. Once you put it it will make you listen like over and over again. I mean who could not like ENIGMA and Sadeness? And I give it a five starts because its a great music to listen and dance and relax.
The best and the number music of the world !!!
Free Music Review: Simply beautiful.
Hit: 5 Stars
True classic from a modern composer. With this album, Enigma made another step towards musical perfection. It is yet unclear to me, how Mr. Gdula can even compare such masterpiece to the works of an American popstar, Prince. After all, who knows Prince besides those who spent millions in his promotion and their [happy] victims? Who's gonna know Prince (besides some hardcore musical historians) a decade from now? With all due respect to his work as performer, in terms of musicality Enigma simply beats the latter by all parameters. Produced quite awhile ago, it still sounds fresh and well up to date. Originality, intelligence, sensuality are what distinguishes MCMXC A.D. pieces from all the rest of wanna-be replicas of genuine art. ...and again, intelligence! [The word that almost lost its meaning in today's art mass-production] Two big thumbs up, Mr. (and Mrs.) Gretu, with this one! Free Music Review: Fantastic!
Hit: 5 Stars
Everybody knows Enigma....even if they don't `know' it. The music from Michael Cretu's little project has sold more than 30 million records (MCMXC a.D. alone sold 15 million worldwide and was in the Billboard Top 200 for 5 years!), and has been used everywhere from TV ads and programs to films; listening to this will provoke many "This sounds familiar..."-type reactions.
This surprise hit just wasn't a success at selling albums: it's also successful at being bloody brilliant! After a rather eye-rolling introduction in which a woman informs us that "over the next hour, you will journey into a world of music, spirit and meditation", over some aloof synths, the album hits its stride with the absolutely cracking, multi-platinum single `Sadeness'. This song - with its homage to sexual deviant, Marquis de Sade - places a Latin male choir chanting over a killer beat and pan-pipes while a woman breathes heavily as the song reaches a climax after a spoken French verse. The expertise with which all these samples are mixed together is stunning and it creates the definite highlight of the album.
The themes brought up by this song, of the duality and conflict of sexual freedom and religion, continue throughout the rest of the album, which is split into three sections, the first dealing mainly with the sexual side. The second section tones that down and Cretu manages to throw in a tribute to Maria Callas in the soothing `Callas Went Away' before the soft percussion of that song gives way to the stomping `Mea Culpa'. More samples come in with the arrival of `The Voice and the Snake'; a short, ritualistic piece that goes on about the apocalypse that would sound quite frightening with the lights switched off.
The last section of the album goes into themes of redemption. It starts very low-key with `Way to Eternity' before the beat from `Sadeness' returns in `Hallelujah', building up into the uplifting `Rivers of Belief'.
This isn't an album that you'll like in your first listen. It isn't as immediate as Enigma's later records, but it is their tightest, most consistent work. If there is any weakness is that a lot of tracks would lose most of their impact if listen to individually instead of in context with the rest of the album. But I suppose that isn't really a negative, it just means that you'll have to listen to the album in order as the tracks all flow into each other seamlessly.
On a finally note, make sure you get this `limited edition' with the `extra tracks' - they're really just remixes, but the remix for `Find Love' dramatically improves over the mediocre original.
Free Music Review: The Music of My Life
Hit: 5 Stars
No matter how many times I listen to this album, I never grow tired of it. As a matter of fact, I literally think that I could listen to this all hours of the day for the rest of my life, and be perfectly content! Very rarely, an album this good comes along, but when it does, it is cherished forever.
It is just... pure ambience. The album's style could best be summed-up as "electro-verve with a touch of chanson and philosophical excerpts." Songs like 'Callous Went Away' and 'The Rivers of Belief' provide such a relaxing ambience of eletronic-intrumental harmony... I could get lost in them forever.
Free Music Review: Magical journey through the darker side of paradise...
Hit: 5 Stars
I've always looked at "MCMXC" which is Roman Numerals for 1990, to be the most unique and most magical of the entire Enigma catelog to date. I doubt Cretu may ever come up with anything that has the feel, nor am I looking for another "MCMXC" anyway but this is without a doubt their most popular and critically acclaimed album.
By the time 1990 rolled over into 1991, a very strange and unusual dance song that combined Gothic Gregorian Chants with an electronic techno beat with a dark New Age melody came in, I was absolutely mezmerized by the song. It would be many years before I would find out that it was the group Enigma nad the song "Sadeness" that took me by storm when I was just a kid at the time of it's release to radio. I bought a copy of this album on November 28, 1999 and finally acquired this great song. But that's not all there is to say.
The album version on here is a much grander and more epic track than the radio edit. The version on here is nearly twelve minutes long! It's actually a three-part trilogy track. The first part is the familiar single that's been popular for over 14 years as of 2005. The first part stops and the chime effects brilliantly merge into a creepy melody. The second part of the track is called "Find Love" which is perhaps my favorite part of the song. "Find Love" is arguably my favorite part of the entire track. The Dark Blue Gothic feel of the first part gives way to something like a grayish reddish mood with a new melody and a lighter jazzier and a soultry female whisper. "Find Love" goes into a state of limbo for about 30 seconds before it goes into the third part of the track which returns the journey the dark blue sounds of "Sadeness". At first it has a piano part which is really beautiful but then it reverts back to the original version and closes out this epic on a grand note. I would even go far enough to categorize this is a Prog-New Age track.
That's not to say that it overshadows the rest of this album either. "Callas Went Away" is a beautiful somber track which uses the drum loop from Mike and THe Mechanics 1985 track "Par Avion" and becomes a beautiful and soul-touching classic.