𝗘𝗡𝗜𝗚𝗠𝗔 - 𝙎𝙞𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙈𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝘽𝙚 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙙 2001

🔵 YouTube Playlist: Enigma is a German musical project founded in 1990 by Romanian-German musician and producer Michael Cretu. Cretu had released several solo records, collaborated with various artists, and produced albums for his then-wife, German pop singer Sandra, before he conceived the idea of a new-age, worldbeat project. He recorded the first Enigma studio album, MCMXC a.D. (1990), with contributions from David Fairstein and Frank Peterson. The album remains Enigma’s biggest, helped by the international hit single, “Sadeness (Part I)“, which sold 12 million units alone. Acording to Cretu, the inspiration for the creation of the project came from his desire to make a kind of music that did not obey “the old rules and habits“ and presented a new form of artistic expression with mystic and experimental components. Enigma followed MCMXC a.D. with a series of albums that involved several musicians and producers working with Cretu. The first was The Cross of Changes (1993), which incorporated tribal and ethnic influences and sold over 8 million copies worldwide, followed by Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi! (1996), which blended together the Gregorian chants reminiscent from the first album and the strong intercultural soundscapes present in the second. Enigma’s fourth album The Screen Behind the Mirror (2000) started a slight departure from the previous world music themes towards a heavier electronic atmosphere. This evolution culminated with Voyageur (2003), its fifth and more pop-based album, and A Posteriori (2006), a work inspired by the future collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, with distinct operatic tones and an electronic spectrum closer to Voyageur than the earlier releases. Seven Lives Many Faces (2008) followed and contained a mixture of classical and modern elements ranging from ethnic chants to rap and dubstep influences. Its eighth album, The Fall of a Rebel Angel, was released on November 2016. Enigma has sold over 8.5 million RIAA-certified albums in the US and an estimated 70 million worldwide with over 100 gold and platinum certifications. The project has also received three Grammy Award nominations. The Screen Behind the Mirror is the fourth studio album by Enigma. Recorded at the . Studios in Ibiza, Spain, it was released worldwide by Virgin Records. Supporters of the album credited it as the most mature album Michael Cretu had created, while critics lamented the use of extensive samples from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The song “Modern Crusaders“ is used as the second ending theme song for the Golden Wind arc of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime series; the series had previously referenced Enigma as the namesake of an antagonist’s anthropomorphic “Stand“ ability in the Diamond Is Unbreakable arc. “The Screen Behind the Mirror“ reintroduces the beat used in “Sadeness (Part I)“ as vocals from Andru Donalds and Ruth-Ann Boyle sing part of the lyrics from “Gravity of Love“. An earlier version of this song, named “The Experience“ only appears on the Australian promo version of the album.