ENIGMA (Michael
Cretu
• Gunter Wagner)
ENIGMA (Michael
Cretu
• Gunter Wagner)It’s been 11 years since those seductively spoken, intriguing – and now instantly recognisable – words first drew us into the multi-faceted, segued longplaying listening experience that has become the trademark Enigma sound. That MCMXC a.D. remained on the American Billboard chart for five years is both testament to the longevity of the quality music contained within and just how many people took its opening sentiments to heart in that expansive country alone. They were not alone.
Worldwide statistics for Enigma’s debut album, its equally popular preceding single, the Gregorian chant-driven ‘Sadeness (Part One)’, plus subsequent albums The Cross Of Changes (1993), Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! (1996), and The Screen Behind The Mirror (2000), are truly staggering: more than 50 number one chart positions and 85 platinum awards! 25 million album sales down the line (and counting), is it any wonder that Enigma is the most successful German pop music project ever?
But project is perhaps the operative word here. For it was 11 years ago that composer and producer Michael Cretu secretly set Enigma on a faceless musical trip around the world, figuratively and literally speaking – figuratively in that Cretu (credited on MCMXC a.D., The Cross Of Changes and their associated singles as ‘Curly M.C.’) utilised the best music technology in the world to sample the delights of global rhythms, sounds and voices, creatively fusing them to a contemporary danceable beat with a pop sensibility and production quality to die for; literally in that he successfully sold his idea to the world. And on his own terms too.
Once, when quizzed about his legendary shying away from the rigour of pop music’s well oiled publicity machine, bravado momentarily got the better of Cretu: “I knew that with the product I had, I was in a position to say just how I wanted things to go. No pictures. Nothing personal. Just Enigma.” So, again figuratively and literally speaking, Enigma it was, and mysterious Cretu remains, as is his want.
Having confidence in your music is all well and good, but playing God in the capricious pop world where 11 years can equal several lifetimes is something else entirely. Surely Cretu must have garnered an acute understanding of the complicated working mechanisms of the music industry to exert such exacting demands?
Yet,
outside this mysterious musical world of Enigma, for many Cretu himself remains
something of an enigma: a musical prodigy born in Romania on 28 May 1957, he
began piano studies aged six at Lehrenstalt High School, a state-run establishment
for nurturing young musical talent in Bucharest. In 1968 he underwent a five-month
intensive study period in Paris, later progressing to the prestigious Academy
of Music in Frankfurt between 1975 and ’78, doubling up as a jobbing session
musician to earn his keep, before taking up German citizenship upon graduating
with distinctions. Despite being an accomplished concert pianist, with a long-held
ambition to become a classical conductor, those late-night studio sessions unexpectedly
paid dividends as Cretu’s career careened toward the pop charts in which the
Enigma name would one day regularly jockey for pole position: “It was more real
life,” he would later reflect.
Initiation into this ‘real life’ profession came with one-time German Eurodisco chart-toppers Boney M, brainchild of ’70s production maestro Frank Farian: Cretu is credited with keyboards on 1978’s Night Flight To Venus album (replete with mega hits ‘Rasputin’, ‘Painter Man’, ‘Rivers Of Babylon’ and ‘Brown Girl In The Ring’). Cretu was clearly quick on the uptake, soon warming the producer’s chair for a string of mostly Central European popular acts like Moti Special, Hubert KaH, Austrian singer/songwriter Peter Cornelius (with whom Cretu later collaborated on the German-language Cornelius + Cretu in 1992; Cornelius also played guitar on the second and third Enigma albums) and, most notably, singing sensation Sandra (who’s albums sold a respectable seven million units with Cretu at the production helm). To say the latter was a successful partnership is an understatement – Sandra married Cretu in 1988, and contributed vocals to all the Enigma albums.
From a more international standpoint, Cretu co-produced the track ‘The Time Has Come’ on Mike Oldfield’s 1987 offering Islands, a phrase that was paradoxically used throughout his own anthemic track ‘Mea Culpa’ on Enigma’s MCMXC a.D., having relocated to the Spanish island of Ibiza with Sandra beforehand (where, coincidentally, his old production mentor Frank Farian also resides, as briefly did Oldfield). Rumours of Oldfield encouraging Cretu to cut down his busy production schedule in favour of concentrating on his own music do not easily hold water in light of the fact that Cretu’s largely forgotten first album, Moon, Light And Flowers, was released on Polygram way back in 1979, releasing two further albums for Virgin in Germany – 1983’s Legionäre and Die Chinesische Mauer (also released in 1985 with English lyrics as The Invisible Man) – before hitting international pay dirt with Enigma.
It’s been suggested that Enigma’s infectious debut recordings dramatically altered pop’s musical landscape. Indeed, as is acutely observed on last year’s Remember The Future 11-song DVD retrospective, in which Cretu’s image mysteriously appears only for a matter of seconds, “While restless spirits were changing trends, styles and fashions on a seasonal basis, Enigma remains a continuum, which reinvents itself. Whether you want to dream or dance, contemplate or love, meditate or make a joyful noise, Enigma makes music for the entire being, and each listener interprets it in his or her own way – ambiguous, intricate and seductive.”
Some might say this statement sounds somewhat pompous. They might be right, for of course it has its agenda, but there’s no denying Cretu’s considerable achievements as Enigma: no doubt Virgin are keen for Cretu’s musical alter ego to retain its status as Germany’s biggest-selling pop project ever; no doubt the simultaneous release of two new Enigma compilation albums, LoveSensualityDevotion - The Greatest Hits and LoveSensualityDevotion - The Remix Collection, will do much to further this cause.
For his part, Cretu prefers to let the music do the talking, as is evident in a record company press release where the composer briefly attempts to decipher those intriguingly titled new ‘L.S.D.’ albums: “I’m addicted to music. So, music is like a drug for me. And others, too, will be able to go on a trip – in a good sense.”
An Enigma ‘Best of’ compilation is not the usual case of a bunch of record company suits rubbing their hands together with mucho corporate glee at the prospect of banking Lottery prize-winning portions of Christmas Euros for very little effort, other than designing a new album sleeve. Oh no. The workaholic Michael Cretu needs to get his hands dirty.
When
asked if he was personally involved in treating any of the tracks on the new
LoveSensualityDevotion – The Greatest
Hits compilation at his Ibiza-based private A.R.T. Studios, the keyboard
virtuoso’s self-assurance instantaneously comes to the fore. “Of course,” he
whoops. “Enigma is my baby, so I can make these kinds of crossfades better than
anybody else; I’ve always been the producer, the sound engineer and everything.
On Enigma 4 [a.k.a. The Screen
Behind The Mirror] I was also working with Jens Gad nearly everyday in
the studio, but all the other albums were basically done alone.”
Enigma obviously remains close to its creator’s heart, so much so that even the classic compilation copout must have a reason for living. “One of the aims with this album was to produce a listening experience whereby you cannot tell which tracks are 10 years old and which are current,” says Cretu with some justification. “Also, I wanted to breathe new life into some of those older songs. The compilation is different – you hear other shades in the songs that sound new, but this is only because they are presented in another context.”
Of course, any compilation worth its salt always features the obligatory new single, and LoveSensualityDevotion – The Greatest Hits is no exception to this, the number one unwritten music-marketing rule. Cretu is quick to sing his new single’s praises: “I was in the mood to do something different, but I think I could only do this kind of song as a one-off single. I like ‘Turn Around’ more and more – not because it’s the latest thing I’ve done as Enigma, but because of its simplicity; it has a charm about it and it’s so full of life. For me, it represents what Enigma is all about, but in a very modern and unobvious way. It has all the famous ingredients and spices that made Enigma successful – a little flute, a little speech and some monks in the middle part – that are like shades of the past, but with some clear development as well. I’m very happy with how all these aspects have integrated together in a very organic way.”
It’s all about presentation, or so it seems. So where does that leave the simultaneously released LoveSensualityDevotion – The Remix Collection? “It’s funny, but it was never my intention to do a remix album,” Cretu claims. “What happened is I was looking for a radio edit for the normal compilation; I pushed the wrong button on the CD player by mistake and a completely different song started playing that I didn’t immediately recognise! I don’t know what song it was – it might have been ‘Age Of Loneliness’ – but I thought it was one hell of a remix! I thought I was going completely nuts, so I invited some other people to come in and listen because I’d forgotten all about it. I realised that so many elements of what we did 10 years ago are now in fashion – the structure and the kind of sounds being used.
“Then I said, ‘Oh my God! Let’s listen to the other remixes.’ I ended up choosing the really good ones and put them all together, so I think it’s a very nice remix album. It has some four-on-the-floor elements, but not exclusively.”
It’s that bravado thing again. And here a hint of irony enters into the Enigma equation, for Cretu remains scathing of today’s seemingly remix-obsessed popular music culture: “I never pay too much attention; nine different versions of a song – I mean, how crazy! Here I simply tried to put out the best version of each song I could find. I do remixes for some situations, but I’m not interested in putting five versions on one record.”
The
scale of Cretu’s ‘enigmatic’ vision became even more apparent when both new
albums were debuted at the Hamburg
Planetarium on 1 October as part of a new laser and light spectacular entitled
Enigma: LoveSensualityDevotion –
The Planetarium Show, a 50-minute programme especially designed for such
domed structures, featuring Enigma music videos combined with effects created
by the newly developed Zeiss Universal Laser Image Projector (ZULIP). In case
you’re wondering, ZULIP is a rather clever – and no doubt very expensive – gadget
for projecting multiple digital images in planetariums. Clearly cost is of little
consequence when you’ve sold in excess of 25 million albums!
Cretu picks up the story: “Actually, I always wanted to premiere Enigma 2 [a.k.a. The Cross Of Changes] in a planetarium, but somehow it never worked out. More recently, we did a DVD [Remember The Future] and the director of the planetarium in Hamburg liked it very much so he called Virgin saying he’d like to make an Enigma programme based on the videos. He proposed a public showing every day; we agreed, but we wanted to premiere the albums to the press first. I gave them all the music from the CDs, then they told me what they intended to do and how they’re going to do it.”
Not that Cretu could remain completely detached, mind you: “I suggested a few small changes here and there – they wanted to start the show with a different piece of music, for example. But it’s very well done, created by the guy behind the DVD, who I knew already.”
Anyone wanting to get lost in space to the grandiose sound of Enigma can now do so with public showings running since 26 October, though living in or around Hamburg would be an obvious bonus if this were to be the case. As would speaking German. Having said that, plans are afoot to bring the show to other planetariums around the world.
But enough of the music; let’s talk gear! So what’s the story behind A.R.T. Studios, Cretu’s idyllic Ibizian hideaway? Well, it transpires weather – or, more precisely, bad weather – was its instigator. Cretu grimaces at the memory, before warming to the theme: “In Germany, it was always freezing in winter, so my wife said, ‘Please, let’s buy a little house somewhere south so I don’t have to face another cold and wet German winter!’ So we bought a little old farmhouse retreat on Ibiza with a view to getting away from the cold for a couple of months each year.
“Then
I said, ‘Why don’t we build a little demo studio there? Then we can maybe stay
for five months!’ Eventually, this demo studio became better and better equipped
– so much so that one day someone working there with me said, ‘You can work
here just as well as anywhere else, so why bother returning to Germany?’ So
that’s how we came to stay on Ibiza.”
While most of the accompanying mouth-watering images show Cretu’s ‘little’ Ibizian studio as it looks today, the Enigma project was born between these very same four walls back in 1990 and, as such, is also testament to the composer-cum-producer’s many pre-Enigma successes. “Basically, nothing has changed over the years, except the desk and a few synthesizer modules,” states its owner, succinctly.
Pushed further, Cretu elaborates, albeit only slightly: “Back then I used another desk, custom built by a friend of mine. Basically, it was like a Neve, with solid-state routings. At this time there was no comparable analogue desk anywhere in the world with 12 aux sends. You can imagine how long ago that was!”
Sydney-based Supersonic Communications’ Gunter Wagner – Cretu’s technical consultant for the last 15 years, and responsible for A.R.T. Studios’ design and maintenance from the outset – steps in: “The studio still looked rather standard at that time; a pile of MIDI modules controlled by a typical Atari computer running Notator, with all audio sources controlled by a 48-channel analogue inline mixer custom built for Michael by a small German company called Estec.”
Of course synthesizers and samplers have always been integral to the oft-imitated Enigma sound, though for the benefit of anyone hoping for inside information on the instruments used on the breakthrough MCMXC a.D. longplayer: prepare to be disappointed. For Cretu’s playing it close to his chest. “Don’t ask me what synthesizers I was using all those years ago,” he retorts!
All is not lost, however. Help is inadvertently at hand in the shapely form of Sandra, or rather the liner notes to the Europopster’s Cretu-produced Paintings In Yellow album (recorded at A.R.T. Studios around the same time as MCMXC a.D.) which states: “Instruments used: AudioFrame workstation, MidiMoog, PPG System, Korg M1, C-Lab Notator, Takamine 6 and 12-string and Tom Anderson electric guitars.” Guitars? Yes, guitars are part of Enigma too!
Cretu partly confirms this musical cross-pollination, boasting, “I haven’t used tape machines since 1989! I used a big, digital machine called the AudioFrame 1000 – I think it was called the WaveFrame in the early days; they’re always changing the name! Today, this is still my basic sampling workhorse – an incredibly good machine to work with. Many of its functions are still absolutely state-of-the-art!” (Check out the Gunter Wagner: Cretu’s Studio Svengali box for more information about this upmarket magical machine.)
In keeping with the original anonymous Enigma marketing and promotion campaign, the MCMXC a.D. sleeve liner notes are necessarily scant; not so its 1992 follow-up, The Cross Of Changes, which states it was “Recorded with the big help and support of E-Magic and Euphonix at A.R.T. Studios, Ibiza/Spain.” Cretu predictably remains tight-lipped about any possible product endorsement implications, before conceding, “I use Logic because I’ve known [Emagic founder] Gerhard Lengeling ever since he first started creating music software under the name of C-Lab, back when I was using Creator and then Notator on the Atari. So now I’ve been working with those guys for something like 16 years. I started using Logic when it was at version ‘Beta 1.0’! Today, I’m using version 4.5, I think.”
And Euphonix? “I had a Euphonix desk at that time – a CS2000. Is that right? I don’t remember the exact model, but I had the smaller, old frame because I liked it better.”
Gunter Wagner again supplies the detail: “When the Australian Channel 9 TV station purchased two Euphonix consoles for their broadcast of the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, I had a chance to play with them and was stunned by this new technology! Michael was also impressed by its full snapshot feature, the small physical size of the controller, and the fact that all the audio electronics could be banished to an outside machine room, so a few months later I installed a 72-fader version of the CS2 – which was later upgraded to become the CS2000 – at his studio.
“Although the Euphonix controller was relatively small compared to a standard inline console, it was still too big and not modular enough to build a specialised controller surface where you could have a master keyboard and all the sampler/sequencer controls and screens around the sweetspot.”
What to do? For a man of Michael Cretu’s not inconsiderable means and sphere of influence the solution was obvious: when AMEK introduced their small, modular and flexible Digital Music System (DMS), Cretu had the company custom-build him a version uniquely geared up to meeting the demands of a modern-day composer and producer.
“Two
years ago we replaced the Euphonix with a custom-built version of AMEK’s DMS
digital console,” confirms Wagner. “With this concept we were finally able to
fulfil Michael’s dream of having the channel controls of a console on both sides
of his working position, leaving the centre free for an integrated full-size
master keyboard, three high-resolution TFT flat screens, a switchable Mac/PC
computer keyboard and a motorised JL Cooper MIDI controller. All these controls
are used to operate the Mac-based Pro Tools and SampleCell system, Emagic’s
Logic Audio software, plus the old, unrivalled AudioFrame 1000.
“Obviously, the whole set-up is tailored for Michael’s production procedures, so it looks quite unusual. Although there are no mechanical patchbays, the system is very flexible. Technically, it provides a high number of inputs – 130, in fact – all freely assignable to 72 simultaneous channels with everything operated from the TFT touch screens and 16 hardware controller modules with freely assignable fader sets. There are no visible cables in the control room, apart from a mic cable and mouse cable.”
But is the man himself happy with the finished result? Damn right, he is! “I was very impressed with how co-operative AMEK were,” Cretu gushes. “I mean, can you imagine? Of course a mixing desk is very important to me as a producer but, as a musician, I was asking if they could add a master keyboard to their latest pride and joy! I’m sure they thought I was completely mad, but they seemed excited about the idea.
“Basically, I wanted to be able to quickly program and mix all from the same place. That’s why I needed to have a built-in master keyboard, because 80% of what I do is keyboard based. The remainder only involves slight adjustments of the production. So AMEK were very nice about it all, also making a few software changes for my way of working.”
Last word on the subject goes to Wagner: “This console was designed with the shape and layout of the studio in Michael’s new house already in mind.”
A new studio? Surely not! Yes indeedy. Cretu will soon be on the move, cross-country transiting to the other side of Ibiza to a secluded new palatial pad that wouldn’t look out of place in a James Bond movie (see Enigma’s New Studio: Wagner Waxes Lyrical box). French Paris Match magazine was suitably impressed enough to send a plane over to snap some awesome aerial photographs.
Back on earth, meanwhile, Cretu’s understandably keen to move into his new recording domain. “The design is different,” he reveals. “The control room is smaller, because I don’t like big rooms. It was necessary to make them bigger to accommodate the big mixing desks of the past, but that’s changed now.”
But similarities are to be had with the old studio, from the shape of the room to the desk and outboard rack placement. According to Cretu: “This layout has been perfect for my kind of work for many years, so why change it?”
Speaking of which, moving into the space-saving realms of software-based samplers like Nemesys’ GigaSampler or, more recently, Emagic’s EXSP24 or Steinberg’s HALion holds no appeal for the great ‘Gregorian’ one. “I’m not a big fan of this kind of stuff because I’ve kept all my old digital machines, like the AudioFrame,” states Cretu, matter-of-factly. “So, for me, it’s really important that I try to avoid software. But if I have to use software plug-ins, I like them to be TDM; then, when loading a song, you know everything is automatically ready in the system. Of course, plug-in technology is now becoming so powerful that my computer is already sweating every day when I boot up the system!”
Cretu is similarly in no great hurry to upgrade to Apple’s latest and greatest desktop. “You know the old saying ‘Never change a winning team’? Well, I never change the equipment! But seriously, I’m in the middle of another production right now, so I’ll have to wait until the last possible moment.
“Now Apple is talking about a G5, but I’m still using a pretty old-fashioned G3! The important thing for me is that it’s working well and the timing is good. One problem is that I’m working with three TFT screens and you can’t run three screens with a G4; I don’t understand why. But I need all that screen space, so I prefer to hang on to my G3 for now.”
Whether the new studio spells the end for the long running, super-selling Enigma project remains to be seen. Cretu’s closure is not necessarily non-committal: “After all my equipment is installed and so on, maybe I’ll start thinking about Enigma 6, or maybe some other project. Right now, I don’t know. Besides, I won’t be able to start anything new until the new studio is working fine. There’s lots of testing to be done, but you never know what I will discover while testing!”
© Jonathan Miller (November 2001)
GUNTER
WAGNER: CRETU’S STUDIO SVENGALII started working as a sound engineer in the late seventies. In 1980 I got more involved in studio design, completing several installations in Germany and Italy. Meanwhile, to make sure I didn’t lose touch with recording practice, I also started my own recording studio, Downtown Music, in Munich. It was here I met Michael Cretu, shortly after he moved from Frankfurt to Munich. I helped him overcome various technical problems with his first studio there.
Michael was always interested in new or unusual recording techniques, and one of the first record producers in Germany to buy a digital multitrack in 1984 – an Otari DTR900, and, a few years later, he was one of the first to get rid of it in favour of recording on hard disk or directly into samplers.
When Michael decided to move to Ibiza in 1988, he asked me to design and install a new studio, and to help in setting up the house and infrastructure to accommodate this new studio. Central to this was a totally new and powerful system that had just appeared on the market: the AudioFrame 1000. This was the first real ‘studio-in-a-box’ – a multitrack hard-disk recorder, virtual digital mixer, and an extremely powerful and flexible sampler. Moreover, the platform was easy to learn as it was based on the then-new Windows operating system. This was a quantum leap from what had gone before, and, unlike other ‘magic machines’ of the time, it really did work in real-time! The musical possibilities of the AudioFrame were seemingly endless, and absolutely unheard of at the time. In fact, some of the old AudioFrame’s features are still unbeaten today! With this, Michael developed a totally new way of producing his musical ideas, and this machine proved to be the key tool when starting his Enigma project.
The AudioFrame system could be accessed and operated from Michael’s second production room, a kind of programming room in another part of the property. To achieve this, it was controlled via a high-speed LAN [Local Area Network] from this room, and I installed some fibre optic lines originally developed for digital communications to ensure the best possible MIDI transmission over a long distance. Needless to say, LAN and fibre optic links were not exactly standard practice in late-eighties recording studios!
ENIGMA’S
NEW STUDIO: WAGNER WAXES LYRICALIn 1993 Michael and Sandra came to visit me here in Sydney, and we started talking about a complete new house and studio set-up on a beautiful piece of land he had just bought on the other side of Ibiza. Everything was then designed by Michael, my business partner Bernd Steber and myself between 1993 and 1995. Greatly influenced by classic Moorish and Arabic architecture, it’s now in the final stages of construction, and we expect to complete it within the next few months so Michael and his family should be able to move in early next year.
The design of the studio in this new house is quite different. Its ceiling is covered with a single piece of canvas, painted by an artist to show outer space with thousands of stars and big clusters of nebulas, as seen in images taken by the Hubble Telescope. The internal wall is built from heavy open porous sandstone blocks, breaking into a rough and irregular line below the ceiling to create an impression of standing somewhere on another planet in a sandstone ruin. I’m presently in negotiations to get a special carpet made which looks like a crater landscape.
MCMXC a.D. (Virgin Records, 1991)
The Cross Of Changes (Virgin Records, 1993)
Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! (Virgin Records, 1996)
The Screen Behind The Mirror (Virgin Records, 2000)
LoveSensualityDevotion - The Greatest Hits (Virgin Records, 2001)
LoveSensualityDevotion - The Remix Collection (Virgin Records, 2001)
