I’ve been an Enigma fan since the late 90’s, and they’re still one of my favorite musical artists. Sexy, dreamy, dark, gothic, world, New Age—the label people slap them with is irrelevant. When I listen to them, I’m transported to some silky, unmade bed inside an open-air pagan temple atop a mountain during a sunset. That music was made for the bedroom, the twilight, the hypnagogic state between waking and sleep. It’s like entering a pre-coital trance, sans drugs; I can almost feel my pupils dilating. It’s no surprise then that I listen to Enigma whenever I’m writing dark, sensual, or transcendental (or all of those at once) material. Enigma could form the soundtrack to my Meridian stories, that dank metropolis adrift in the Styx. My favorite Enigma album is A Posteriori, with tracks such as ‘Dancing With Mephisto’ being the ultimate gothic seduction music (think cobwebs, wet leather, guttering braziers, red wine, and a blindfold). Other tracks, like ‘Dreaming of Andromeda’ or ‘Hello and Welcome’ sound like great gulfs of existential sadness and longing. The song ‘In the Shadow, in the Light’ from the Voyageur album, pines with a desperation that for me is profound. But the one song that grabs me the most is ‘Beyond the Invisible’ from the Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! album. That one is like the piercing of the veil, the opening of an inner eye. So needless to say, despite my rational nature, Enigma brings out my hedonistic, mystic side. With plenty of bared flesh.
RSS Feed
