Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/28/what-if-enigma-released-the-se.html
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That video looks like a mashup of every shitty perfume commercial.
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I’m Enigma’d right now.
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Sometimes it’s wiser to just leave the audience wanting more.
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Of similar era, I still have some fondness for Single Gun Theory:
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Part of the Sadeness magic was reminding people of the then-ubiquitous Amen Break on its precisely sampled digitally-mediated loop, but being crisply synthesized from scratch (Korg Wavstation, I think)
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Fixed that headline for you…
Enigma released the second part of Sadeness eighteen months ago and nobody noticed.
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I remember hearing “Sadeness I” on a “Pure Moods” CD back in 1997. When I was 13. Between the French and heavy breathing, my early teenage brain found it incredibly sexy and loved every minute of it. The song still holds a special place in… well, let’s say heart.
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I didn’t expect to find out today that I should be feeling retroactive white guilt for enjoying the new-age EDM of the 90s. Dang.
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I’m releasing the second part of Sadness, right now
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There’s a performance of Adiemus somewhere on youtube which is literally a horde of white girls in cornrows rocking back and forward when it gets to the “african children” bit
I liked it too but sometimes you see something and it’s like a puzzle piece clicking into place and you say, ah.
Here’s some SHAMANIC BUSINESS from my problematic EDM new age faves file
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I had successfully forgotten Enigma.
There had been this incident involving psychedelics and the ‘repeat’ function on my CD player…
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And don’t forget ‘Delerium’
Shudders…
Adiemus sort of sat in a weird place that was sorta-problematic but at the same time just derivative. If I’m remembering correctly, their producer/songwriter/composer was trying to figure out how to make his songs sound less ‘formal/European’ and realized that the tribal voices on field recordings had no vibrato. So he took out all the lyrics, replaced them with nonsense words, and had his vocalists sing them as loud as they could without using vibrato to get that faux-tribal sound. So it’s definitely got that problematic cultural-appropriation thing going on but with a heavy dose of sheer innocent “how do they get that unique sound and how can I utilize it?”
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I wasn’t even aware that Enigma was known outside of France.
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On a holiday over in Kauai I once splashed out on a helicopter tour that was rather sullied by the enforced Adiemus soundtrack over the inflight headsets.
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I fell out of love with their signature tune when I was on a Delta flight stuck on the tarmac for an hour or so. It was when Adiemus was their soundtrack, and that song played repeatedly for over an hour. That was enough faux tribal singing to last me for a few decades.
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