Released November 22, 1996 Artist Enigma | Release date 22 November 1996 | |
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Label VirginCharisma (United States) Genres New-age music, Ambient music Nominations Echo Award for Best National Rock/Pop Male Artist Similar Enigma albums, New-age music albums | ||
Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! (French for "The King Is Dead, Long Live The King!") is the third studio album by the German musical project Enigma.
Contents
Released on 25 November 1996, the album reached to the top spot in Norway's top 40 charts and third in the whole of Europe. Two singles from the album, "Beyond the Invisible" and "T.N.T. for the Brain" were also released at around the same time of its parent album. A planned third single, "The Roundabout", was scrapped at the last minute for unclear reasons, even though a remix had already been created by DJ Quicksilver.
This album continued Enigma's trend, giving it a slightly more modern, futuristic sound by combining the elements of Enigma's first album, MCMXC a.D., and their second album, The Cross of Changes. Michael Cretu, producer of the project, considered Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! to be the child of the previous two albums, with the first being the father and the second being the mother, as indicated by the 19‑second track, "Third of its Kind".
There are two editions of the packaging; one with standard paper artwork, and another with translucent tray and booklet artwork printed on a heavier plastic.
Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! was nominated in the 1998 Grammy Awards for Best New Age Album and Johann Zambryski's album art design earned him a nomination for Best Recording Package.
The intro track begins with a sample of mission control contacting the Discovery from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The intro, including the famed "Enigma horn", is played backwards for the closing track, "Odyssey of the Mind".
The track "T.N.T. for the Brain" contains samples taken from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. The samples are just audible, underlying the main music. They can be most clearly heard at the start and the end of the track, but are just noticeable throughout.
Enigma le roi est mort vive le roi
Reception
Rick Anderson of AllMusic stated that "[Michael Cretu, as Enigma] doesn't seem to have done much to expand upon his original ideas", and despite reserving praise for the "darkly lovely" "The Child in Us", dismissed most of the album as "twaddle" and "disappointing". The site gave the album two-and-a-half stars out of five. In a D+ review, Tracey Pepper of Entertainment Weekly summarized the album as "another synthesizer-heavy mix of Gregorian chants, moody atmospherics, lyrics rife with existential platitudes, and well-trodden '90s dance rhythms", writing "It sounded okay in 1990, but now it's just embarrassing."
Singles
Personnel
Singles
Billboard (North America)
Songs
1Le Roi est mort - vive le Roi!1:58
2Morphing Thru Time5:48
3Third of Its Kind0:19