Created by EnigmaMusic.com

1985

This is about when the story of public interest in the work of Michael Cretu began. Maybe it was never threaded into one tale and he never would have wanted it to be since Cretu always had preferred to remain an invisible force behind the music, felt but never pin-pointed or brought to the fore-front. That force was felt by the effect of several episodes of success throughout Europe. A song entitled "Maria Magdalena" by Sandra was released. The collaboration between Michael Cretu and Hubert Kemmler yielded some of Cretu's most memorable productions of the 1980's.

The elements of commercial success were combinations of Cretu's musical spectrum of creativity, the shades of which were in development since 1978 and Hubert Kemmler's profound sensitivity in expressing emotion and energy through melody rendered him a distinguished and successful song-writer.

The final ingredient was the charisma of a front person, and Sandra had the beauty, the style and years of experience that were enough to refine her persona as a recording artist and cover-model. Sandra's innocent and bright vocals, layered over Cretu's sophisticated arrangements, brought about new joy in music of pristine and untainted grandeur. "Maria Magdalena" typified the combination of those elements. The success was instant and astounding, as the song was number - one in 16 European countries. Out-selling the Beatles in Sweden, the song was practically unavoidable anywhere that year.

Few People knew at the time that the success earlier that year of Moti Special's "Cold Days Hot Nights" was the work of the same producer. Both Thissy Thiers and Armand Volker, from Moti Special, were also parts of the Sandra project. Their's falsetto vocals bore resemblance to the Bee Gees and probably followed the trend set by the enormous success of the sound of "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack. "Cold Days Hot Nights" bore a feel of the 1970's disco and rock brought with sophisticated production that was only possible in the mid-eighties.

In the shadow of Sandra's success, Michael Cretu released an album that was by many measures of pioneering nature in 1985: "The Invisible Man" (Virgin CD 610 622-225) "(Die Chinesische Mauer.)" (Virgin CD 610 389-222.) The album had one commercially successful song entitled "Samurai", although there were several single releases from the album including "Die Chinesische Mauer" , "Carte Blanche", in addition to the hit "Samurai".
One year later, in 1986, Cretu was to release a single that emulated the bombastic character of "Samurai": "Gambit". The b-side to that release was "Mikado" from the 1985album. The whole album was re-issued in 1986 with "Gambit" added to the track-list. One could note that after "Samurai" it was rather clear that none of the remaining tracks had as strongly commercial a potential as did "Samurai". Nowadays, that hardly seems relevant as "Die Chinesische Mauer" stands as Cretu's most memorable pre-Enigma work. The sound of the album was more sophisticated and impressionist than "Legionaire" of 1983. The sounds were more complex and layered becoming ethereal at times and more energetic at others. The trilogy "Intro", "Mikado", and "Coda" that is an overture to the German album (and occurs in the middle of the English album) is probably the most relevant to Cretu's later direction. The three tracks flow one into the other with a combination of rich production, strong beat and dramatic bell-like synthesizers that had been used a year earlier in HUBERT KaH's "Wenn der Mond die Sonne Beruhrt (The Picture)" of the 1984 album "Goldene Zeiten". In fact, there is evidence that Cretu had begun work on that album (in German or English) much earlier than 1985 , probably immediately after he finished "Legionaire".

In 1984 there is an obscure release of "Schwarzer Engel" on 7" as a b-side to "Karawanen" from "Legionaire". In other words, since the a-side was from "Legionaire" and the b-side was from "Die Chinesische Mauer", one may assume that tracks from the 1985 release were complete and ready to appear over a year earlier. The date of that obscure release was the 3rd of September 1984 (Virgin 106 819.)

Michael Cretu ~ "I'd always put my money in instruments and equipment...."

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Written and researched By Taha A. Al-Douri
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