Enigma Cross Of Changes CD

Enigma: Michael "Curly MC" Cretu (vocals, various instruments, programming).
Additional personnel includes: Louisa Stanley (vocals); Jens Gad (guitar).
Recorded at A.R.T. Studios, Ibiza, Spain.
Personnel: Michael Crétu (vocals, programming); Peter Cornelius, Jens Gad (guitar); Sandra Cretu, Louisa Stanley, Angel (background vocals).
Recording information: A.R.T. Studios, Ibiza, Spain.
Cretu being no fool, he figured if it worked the first time, no need to change things much for the second. But he also knew not to simply go ahead and just rehash his debut for Cross of Changes, resulting in a just different enough effort along the same overall lines. The usual air of tasteful middle-of-the-road spirituality takes precedence, right down to the cover art and appropriately pantheistic quote from Persian mystic poet Rumi in the CD booklet. Needless to say, the music attempts to match the same throughout, and often succeeds. Things kick off with more of the synth-whale song noises and atmospherics from MCMXC, however there aren't any monks to be found this time around, but what sounds like the same whispering woman talking about "clearing the debts of many hundred years" and the like. From there, Cretu merrily takes the same plunge -- some of his sample choices this time around show he's got a decent record collection, including parts from Songs From the Victorious City, the striking fusion of Egyptian and Western musics from Anne Dudley and Jaz Coleman. His work with beats and loops noticeably shows a more developed edge -- while hardly an innovator, there's a bit more grime and loud in his rhythms, which in combination with extra electric guitar make a reasonable contrast to the smoother elements. Consider the rampaging conclusion to "I Love You...I'll Kill You," which while sharing some cheese with the title itself still works surprisingly well, right down to a clever Robert Plant vocal sample at the end. "Return to Innocence" was the big single from this one, not quite up there with "Sadeness" in the popular culture in the U.S. but almost inescapable elsewhere. There's another Led Zeppelin sample (this time John Bonham) and a haunting male vocal providing oomph under the fuzzy-headed greeting card philosophy of the main lyrics. It's an impressive effort, showing Cretu had a definite something in his own way. ~ Ned Raggett
On THE CROSS OF CHANGES, Enigma delves into the mystic with a musical fervor that transcends sampling technologies and popular dance beats. THE CROSS OF CHANGES is a serene yet supremely sensual musical synthesis that might best be characterized as new age hip-hop. Enigma's worldwide hit MCMXC A.D. was notable for, among other things, its use of Gregorian chants as samples in a heady techno mix, which inspired such delirious interest in this ancient music that The Benedictine Monks Of Santo Domingo De Silos are currently enjoying their own Top 10 hit--CHANT.
With THE CROSS OF CHANGES, Enigma's auteur Michael Cretu has merged a series of chants and simple devotional lyrics into a smooth techno-psychedelic wall of sound that is, in contemporary terms, a synthesized flipside to the techno-pop dance grooves of groups like Ace Of Base. Apples and oranges? Certainly, but both groups do employ texture and repetition to particular advantage in a pop context. However, where Ace Of Base finds nirvana in the incantory rhythms of reggae and the classic textures of old-fashioned analog synthesizers, Enigma extracts their hypnotic rhythms and textures from a variety of Eastern sources--at times evoking the ghosts of fellow mystics Pink Floyd, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream.
In celebrating the libidinous ambivalence of "I Love You...I'll Kill You," Cretu mixes whispered female vocals (Barry White, anyone?), distant electric guitar swells and synthesizer washes, with snippets of non-Western reed and percussion instruments (such as Indian tabla drums, which carry the groove like a Fender bass).