The backwards chanting and lyrical references to the Marquis de Sade were blasphemous enough for the Vatican to ban the single Sadeness (Part I) from the radio stations it controlled, a move that must have pleased both the label and Cretu himself after all, you can’t buy publicity like that. The controversy it sparked didn’t hurt, either. The album went triple-platinum in the UK, sold 4m copies in the US and topped the charts globally. The result was MCMXC a.D., a 40-minute work as intense as a ritual of demonic invocation.
Retiring to his ART Studios in Ibiza with producers Frank Peterson and Fabrice Cuitad, he conceived the sound of Enigma, combining worldbeat, ambient and electronica with imagery evoking the religious and profane. It was after experimenting with Gregorian chants on Sandra’s version of Everlasting Love that Cretu decided to explore this route further. The mastermind behind the band was Michael Cretu, a Romanian-German musician whose credits included playing keyboards on Boney M’s Rivers of Babylon, co-producing Mike Oldfield’s Islands and crafting instant hits such as Maria Magdalena for his then wife, the German synthpop star Sandra. Faithful to their name, Enigma created a space for the mysterious and the forbidden to prosper, eventually securing a game-changing reputation within dance music while at the same time reinventing the new-age genre.