Created by EnigmaMusic.com

2000

The fourth Enigma album was a favourite to many. The comparisons were numerous to the now legendary first album. Again, those comparisons reduced and simplified. "The Screen Behind the Mirror" ( European Virgin CD 7243 8 48606 2 2 ) bore a strong and clear concept: the discrepancy between vision and perception; between what we see and what we perceive, primarily of ourselves and consequently of the universe. The album was structured around a very familiar piece: "O Fortuna" from the opera Carmina Burana by Carl Orff (1895-1982). Most critics fell into a trap of resenting a familiar piece thus missing the defiance and power in Cretu's choice. Michael Cretu, if anyone, knows a thing or two about timeless beauty for he spent a lifetime composing music that straddled a thin line between the ephemeral and the disposable, ultimately becoming one of the modern composers whose music is most collected and treasured. Cretu faced much greater a challenge in working with the familiar "O Fortuna"than he did in 1990 with the obscure chants as he was sowing seeds in a frequently trodden terrain. Yet, he had the confidence that he had something new to say about "O Fortuna".

The setting was lavish and sensual: a Viennese masquerade. Michael Cretu had worked with another element of familiarity, the voice of Ruth-Ann from the British pop-group Olive. Her voice sounded different and dark in the beautiful and masterful track "Gravity of Love" (European Virgin CD7243 8 96413 2 5.) "Different" covers the wide territory of criticism aroused by Ruth-Ann's collaboration with Enigma. While some acknowledged the release of a whole new sublimity to Ruth-Ann's voice and persona, other simply decided that Michael Cretu had cast her into Enigma for the wrong reasons and had lost the beauty of her voice between the knobs and dials of his computers.

"The Screen Behind the Mirror" had a powerful, dark, sometimes even crude feel that set it apart from the other Enigma albums, especially from the third album. The beats were strong, the melodies unsettling, even threatening at times. "Push the Limits" was a unique track in being dynamic and tragic even in its rather long album version (6:27). It was released as the second single ( European Virgin CD 7243 8 96680 2 5 ). The limited issue of the single contained the video playable on a computer terminal. The re-mixes, with strong progressive-house by Andrea Tannenberger a.k.a. ATB, amplified the powerful beat and melody. However, it was almost by evidence of ATB's bombastic and very long re-mix that the power of the original album version becomes evident.

"Traces (Light and Weight)" is a track that stands out by original use of match lighting (light) and water-drops trickling (weight); as Cretu carried the idea of the piece in tune and not in words. After all philosophy is not an applied science; and so in one more step of its evolution, Enigma is a bit more silent in the fourth album than in the previous three. Appropriately, the last track of "The Screen Behind the Mirror" is entitled "Silence Must be Heard".

A new album produced for Andru Donalds by Michael Cretu Cretu titled "Let's Talk About It"is about to be released; and a first single has already appeared entitled "Precious Little Diamond" - which was a cover version of a song by a group named Fox the Fox.

The second single "( I'm Not Your) One Night Lover." will be released to co-incide with the new album release

Michael Cretu ~ "The Screen Behind The Mirror", the album title could almost be a booktitle by Jean-Paul Sartre."

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