After Enigma

If you know much of anything about this genre, you probably know who Delerium is. They are commercialy succesful enough to be on sale in the pop/rock section of most music stores, and Silence (feat. Sarah McMcLachlan's lyrics and vocals) off of their album Karma received a fair amount of radio play. What you may not know is how massively prolific Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber are outside of Delerium. I could go into the details of their discography myself, but I think it would be much more rewarding for all involved to send you to www.delerium.com; not only do they provide a thourough discography, they also have quite a few out-of-print songs and videos availablefor download. Don't expect to like everything you find, though - these guys have released a slew of albums in the industrial and more experimental electronic generes. Only those with the most diverse of musical tastes will like all of it.

A number of their projects do have a place on this site, though. Conjure One is Rhys Fulber's recent side project, and very much in line with "new" Delerium (contrasted with pre-Semantic Spaces Delerium, which was more of a dark, ambient experiment). Intermix was a bit of an early manifestation of the new Delerium, and though I haven't heard their work under the name "Synasthesia" myself, I believe it may be similar as well.

As one might expect, given Leeb and Fulber's other musical endeavours, Delerium and friends fall on the darker side of the music featured on this site. In fact, I've danced to a number of their tracks at goth clubs in Austin and San Antonio. Nevertheless, they're not depressing - mysterious, hypnotic and provocative would be better descriptors. They skillfuly combine world music samples with synths and always have solid beats. Their tracks are typically quite long, and frequently don't follow standard pop song structure.

Enigma

Michel Cretu, the man behind Enigma, really started the ball rolling. I'm sure some music historians would be happy to explain that he did not, in fact, start anything - rather he copied x, who was heavily influenced by y, who was practically a student of z, on back to the beginnings of Gregorian Chant. Fine. I concede that Cretu didn't invent music, and he probably didn't even invent this genre. What he did do was produce an incredibly popular and accessible series of albums that put the genre on the radio, and into the ears of the masses.

Enigma was particularly influential in the development of my musical tastes. I vividly remember the first time I saw the advertisement for the original Pure Moods CD on television - I was in junior high school, on vacation with my family in Galveston. When I heard Return to Innocence, I was spellbound. Soon after we returned home, I bought Cross of Changes, and it has led me to where I am - writing my own music, and creating a site for fans of the genre Enigma helped to create.

Given that you're here, you probably already know what Enigma sounds like, but since I use Enigma as a measuring stick for everything else, I should demonstrate how I describe, as a point of reference. Enigma's albums gerneally feel like concept albums to me, though the most recent seems less so. MCMXC A.D. strikes me as the chant album, Cross of Changes the tribal album, etc. I like that, but I also like a good bit of variety between the songs - some with pop structure (verse-chorus-verse-chorus), some without - some instrumental, some vocal - light and dark moods, etc. Enigma does this, as well. The songs aren't overly saccharine, like some New Age music, but neither are they consistenly dark. I like a good beat most of the time, but occasional atmospheric tracks greatly enhance the albums as self-contained artistic works. Finally, Enigma fuses the disparate musical sensibilities of western music with other musical cultures seamlessly. I honestly don't listen to my Enigma CDs that often anymore - I have listened to them so many times in the past, that I can hear most of the tracks in my head. Though my favorite band or album fluctuates from day to day and hour to hour, if I had to pick an all-time favorite, Enigma would be it.