The Enigma that is Cretu

Alarge chunk of the record-buying world still isn't sure who, or what, Enigma is. Michael Cretu, however, is sure of himself. Describing his latest album in a recent interview, he said: 'It offers emotional layers depending on your moods and feelings, which you can recognise and which you will all like. That was the first thing I noticed when I finished it.' Not much room for insecurity there - not when you've created a multi-purpose record to suit listeners of every persuasion.

Perhaps Bucharest-born Cretu's early success with Enigma, in which, as arranger, performer, producer and overlord he is joined by vocalist wife Sandra Lauer, still buttresses his attitude. Their debut album, MCMXC.a.D, released in 1990, set the standard for sales everywhere. Propelled by the single Sadeness Part I, which married monks' Gregorian chants - plus Cretu's comments on the Catholic Church's attitude to sexuality - with references to perverted visionary the Marquis de Sade, it sold 12 million copies from Vietnam to Venezuela.

The Vatican disapproved, but Cretu had started the dance/trance tidal wave rolling - and much of that first album concerned itself with winding listeners up into a frenzy before chilling them out again with a sense of release . . .

Today, Cretu, 42, talks about the development of musical ideas, but Enigma's fourth album, The Screen Behind The Mirror, ploughs the same furrow as the first. He shuns publicity, perhaps hoping to create it by encouraging speculation and rumour, but surfaces to give interviews; like a dissident, he is outspoken but hides his face. So what are Cretu and Enigma really about? 'Enigma is a term, an institutional word, and I still think it's beautiful,' said Cretu. 'Of course, I'd be amused if people still didn't know who's behind it, but unfortunately some people couldn't keep their mouths shut. I've been trying for years to keep out of the limelight as much as possible.

'But there was a 10-year plan, and I did envisage Enigma still being around in 2000. There was supposed to have been a live concert, and the fourth album was going to be a 'greatest hits'. But it takes two years to prepare a concert like that, and I thought I'd rather record another album. It's more fun.' Charges of New Age pretence have been levelled at Cretu and his layered, synthesiser-heavy compositions; and notwithstanding all that machinery, he's closer to progressive rockers Yes than multi-track maestros Tangerine Dream. But Cretu doesn't concern himself with opinion. He's gone beyond that. He's an alchemist. At least, that's what he's called himself in the past.

' 'Alchemistic' work means playfulness for me: there are different ways to get your goal, but you never know which way you'll go in the end,' he said. 'It's not that I work without a plan and everything just sort of happens, [but] I've saved my childlike playfulness: without consideration of losses, not to be accountable to anyone, but rather to do what I feel like doing. The basic philosophy of my work has remained the same. That means any album . . . reflects my psychological situation, my thinking, my feelings for life.' Despite Cretu's leanings towards juvenile simplicity, he gives his comments on his music an intellectual veneer. 'The Screen Behind The Mirror could almost be the title of a book by Jean-Paul Sartre,' he said. 'I mean, if somebody looks in a mirror they see themselves the way they want to. But a lot lies hidden between what people consider themselves and what they really are. And why does everyone always emphasise that I'm talking about sexuality? It's one of the central themes of mankind. You can't try to ignore the true principle of life as if it didn't exist.' Such a seemingly highbrow approach conflicts with Cretu's take on the signals Screen is sending out, which he considers 'broadcasting de-coded. Too many people think and consider too much,' he said. 'Why should we think so much?' Whatever Cretu's philosophy, however, not everyone agrees with it. The monks on his first album took exception to their being sampled, and the matter was settled (financial details undisclosed) out of court. More recently, an elderly Taiwanese couple alleged they had been featured without their knowledge on another roaring Cretu success. Kuo Ying-nan and his wife Kuo Hsin-chu, both in their late-70s belong to the obscure Ami people, whose recording of a folk tune called the Jubilant Drinking Song was allegedly sampled without permission for inclusion on the Enigma hit Return To Innocence - the theme song of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Cretu's side assert that the sample was properly licensed. The case continues.