Hello y'all (whoever y'all are),
I'm back, and this time I'm here to rave about music that I have grown to love and revel in. Unfortunately for me, I am yet to find a single term that accurately captures the genre, but it has been variously described as worldbeat, "intelligent techno", "synthpop", "ambient techno", electronica or what not. If you have difficulty pinpointing the kind of music I'm referring to, think Enigma, Delerium, or Alpha Conspiracy.
I know what you're gonna say: "Enigma?? They went out of fashion in MCMXC A.D.!!". It is certainly true that Enigma has been around for a while, but it took me till just a week ago to simply realize what I have been missing out on listening to for SO DAMN LONG! In fact, I am currently in the process of wearing out my copies of "The Cross of Changes" and "Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi". I find myself thoroughly incapable of controlling my urges to keep drowning myself in the lilting ambience of "I Love You, I'll Kill You" from The Cross of Changes. And for once, such a fantastic song is actually more than 8 minutes long! What else can a grown man ask for? Not to mention "The Child In Us", "Roundabout" and "TNT For The Brain" from "Le Roi...". *Man* do I love this stuff.
I have heard Delerium once before and was impressed, but not sufficiently enough to want to actually plonk down them greenbacks to buy the CD. Thanks to the beauty of Amazon's "People who bought X also bought Y" feature though, I chanced upon their latest album "Chimera" while browsing through the Enigma collection. The samples of their tracks appealed to the electronica-phile in me, but if there's one thing that made me impulsively click "submit", it had to be finding Andrew Sega's name on the credits list! This darn CD actually features a Delerium track remixed by Andrew Sega! Oh. My. God. So why in heaven's name am I so excited, you ask? Well, this is all I'll say: head on out to Andrew's (now calling himself the Alpha Conspiracy) website, browse over to the "Remix" section, and listen to his rendition of "The World in My Eyes" originally by Depeche Mode, and you'll know what I mean. If there ever was a song that would make me wanna get jiggy with it while running a 104F fever, this is it. Until I heard his "After All" remix in Chimera, that is (I got the CD this morning, wahoo!). Now I can't make up my mind which one I'd keep if I were stranded in the Sahara with a 6 Meg CompactFlash card.
Andrew Sega, for the uninitiated, is also the genius behind the awesome soundtracks in the Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex blockbuster PC games. He is credited with "Freelancer" as well, but I am yet to get my hands on that puppy. Has any of you (two) readers listened to this?
Anyway, if you have some suggestions for music that closely resembles the style of Enigma, Delerium, Deep Forest (the original album, at least) or the Alpha Conspiracy, do leave a comment behind and I'll owe you a thanks!