MCMXC a.D.

Recording

MCMXC a.D. was recorded in 1990 across eight months at A.R.T. Studios located in Cretu's home on the Spanish island of Ibiza. It is one of the first albums recorded on a hard disk drive.

The chants used on "Sadeness" and "Mea Culpa" were mostly taken from Paschale Mysterium (1976) by the German choir Capella Antiqua München with conductor Konrad Ruhland, specifically from the track "Procedamus in pace! (Antiphon)". The vocals were used without permission which led to a lawsuit.

MCMXC a.D. is considered a landmark and innovative New-age album. Cretu developed the idea of sampling. Though samples had been used by artists such as Jean-Michel Jarre and Klaus Schulze, Cretu built his music around whole sequences of previously recorded parts. This method was adopted by many hip-hop and electronic music artists.

Songs

MCMXC a.D. starts with a foghorn, later on to be known as the "Enigma horn" and the voice of Louisa Stanley, who at the time was an executive at Virgin Records speaking in "The Voice of Enigma". The Gregorian chant "Procedamus in pace!" then segues into the three-part "Principles of Lust". The first, "Sadeness", received the most attention through its unique and previously unheard mix of Gregorian chants and dance beat. The track features triangles and synthesized shakuhachi flutes with French lyrics and breathy sounds from Sandra, as well as samples from "Inifinity" by Greek band Aphrodite's Child. As for the male voice speaking in French during the track, Cretu only described him as a good friend of his. "Sadeness" fades into the second part, "Find Love", in which Sandra instructs the listener to follow their lust. Reversed chants signal the start of "Sadeness (Reprise)" and continues with a short piano theme based on the earlier shakuhachi flutes. The flute returns as chants of "Hosanna" gradually bring "Principles of Lust" to an end.

"Callas Went Away" is a tribute to the opera singer Maria Callas. Chirps from electronic birds at the beginning, mixed with a slow beat and sounds of a piano leads to Sandra's whispers and ends with some samples of Callas singing the aria '"Ces lettres! Ces lettres!" from the opera Werther by Jules Massenet.

The rain at the beginning of "Mea Culpa" is taken from the introduction of "Black Sabbath" by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath. The chant "Kyrie Eleison" (from Mass XI, Orbis Factor, in the Liber usualis) appears predominantly alongside Sandra's vocals and flutes. The song segues into "The Voice & The Snake", which is based on "Seven Bowls" by Aphrodite's Child, where a group of people describe the end of the world in an eerie and haunting manner, as mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

A bowl falls to the ground and breaks, leading into "Knocking on Forbidden Doors". The drum beats in the song were made to resemble the sound of a door being knocked. A guitar enters and slips aside quietly for Gregorian chants, this time a part of "Salve Regina", and fading into the "Back to the Rivers of Belief", another three-part track. It begins with "Way to Eternity", featuring composer John Williams' five-toned notes from the science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which leads to mellow Gregorian chants. The beat from "Sadeness" returns with violins for the start of the second part, "Hallelujah". The triangle and voice from the first track reappears and repeats itself. The final section, "The Rivers of Belief", features Cretu singing the chorus. After that, the music stops completely, and John Forst's unfamiliar male voice recites 8:1 from the Book of Revelation — "When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, silence covered the sky" — which is sampled from 666 (The Apocalypse of John, 13/18) (1972) by Aphrodite's Child. Incidentally, the sentence about the seventh seal enters at the seventh minute and seventh second of the seventh track on some pressings of the album. The music closes with shakuhachi flutes, Cretu's vocals, and a falling star effect followed by the "Enigma horn".

Sleeve design

The album's artwork was designed by Johann Zambrysky, who would design the covers for the next four Enigma albums. It depicts a black frame surrounding a silhouette of a figure being enshrouded in a bright light, and a Christian cross in the lower centre of the album for emphasis towards the themes of the album.

Several quotes are printed on the booklet, including the following:

The path of excess leads to the tower of wisdom.

The pleasure of satisfying a savage instinct, undomesticated by the ego, is uncomparably much more intense than the one of satisfying a tamed instinct. The reason is becoming the enemy that prevents us from a lot of possibilities of pleasure.

If you believe in the light, it's because of obscurity, if you believe in happiness it's because of unhappiness, and if you believe in God then you'll have to believe in the devil.

The cover of the "Limited Edition" of the album is the same as for the original release, but has a grainy dark green background instead of black. The first million copies of the album also have a holograph of the monk and cross on top of the album instead of the normal art work. The sleeve bears a strong resemblance to that of the 1986 Dead Can Dance album Spleen and Ideal.

Release

MCMXC a.D. was released on 3 December 1990. It was an unexpected worldwide commercial success, reaching the top 10 in ten countries, including the UK for one week, and No. 6 in the U.S. where it sold over 4 million copies and stayed on the Billboard 200 chart for 282 weeks, a period of over five years. By January 1994, the album had sold 14 million copies worldwide. The album received a total of over 60 Platinum awards.

Four songs from MCMXC a.D. were released as singles. "Sadeness (Part I)" was released in November 1990 to commercial success. The singles "Mea Culpa (Part II)" , "Principles of Lust" and "The Rivers of Belief" were released in 1991.

The success of MCMXC a.D. influenced the works of B-Tribe (Fiesta Fatal!), Delerium (Semantic Spaces, Karma), Banco de Gaia, and Sarah Brightman (Eden). The album was also a stepping stone for the creation of many other groups who mainly include Gregorian chants in their music, such as Era and Gregorian, founded by Frank Peterson prior to his falling out with Cretu.

Controversies

In 1991, Polydor Germany sued Cretu and Virgin Germany for infringing on its "right of personality" in the Gregorian chant samples used in "Sadeness (Part I)" and "Mea Culpa". The lawsuit was settled out of court after Cretu agreed to pay compensation to the original creator of the samples. The case did not cover copyright infringement as the 1976 chant recordings were in the public domain.

Reissues

A limited edition of MCMXC a.D. was released on 4 November 1991 with four remixed tracks. The original part of the album blends into the first of the four additional tracks, and each of the additional tracks also blend into each other. This gives the album a sense of continuation from start to finish. One of the remixes, The Returning Silence of The Rivers of Belief, does not appear on any of the singles.

The November 1999 reissue includes six remixed tracks on a second disc.

Track listing

Note: Some subsequent reissues dedicate a separate track to each individual song.

Singles

Personnel

Enigma: