#Enya best hits series#

Featuring Irish-language vocals delivered at EnyaвЂ™s most breathy, вЂњAldebaranвЂќ marries the Irish past to the future through a bonkers tale of intergalactic travel.

#Enya best hits series#

Nothing typifies this more than my favorite Enya track, the beguiling вЂњAldebaran.вЂќ It first found fame as part of the soundtrack she composed for the BBC documentary вЂњThe Celts,вЂќ a 10-episode series that told the story of the Celtic people from prehistory to 1987. This imagery made Enya a world unto herself. Her videos present her as an ethereal being, surrounded at all times by 400 lit candles, wearing a wardrobe bequeathed to her by a faerie queen who had too many velvet capes lying around and hated to see them go to waste. This skepticism was probably because of the mythological visual style that Enya built around herself: She lived in a castle, rarely gave interviews or performed live. For all her peculiar complexity, my classmates wrote Enya off as easy listening, on par with panpipe Muzak. The images blaring out from EnyaвЂ™s album covers and videos were unerringly earnest, simultaneously too camp to be serious and too serious to be camp. Yet when I tried to posit her as a peer of those artists, the stares I received were blank and pitying. I found in her music that same pinch of the infinite I felt listening to вЂњAn Ending (Ascent),вЂќ by Brian Eno, or вЂњPolynomial-C,вЂќ by Aphex Twin. I adored Enya for the sonic worlds she charted for her listeners: filled with pomp and grandiosity, yes, but also rivers of deep and intense wonder. When I was a teenager, Enya was hugely famous but never especially cool, at least not among people my age. Within the spiraling melody of вЂAldebaranвЂ™ there is euphoria and gravitas, as well as something approaching dread. By the time I was an adolescent, the shy little sister of Clannad had become one of the biggest-selling recording artists on Earth. She departed from the BrennansвЂ™ band, Clannad, at a young age, boned up on Japanese synths and crafted a strange musical form that was all her own. As a child, Eithne Brennan grew up not far from Mullennan, my home, in one of the most prestigious families in the history of Irish traditional music. How, then, could Enya reduce this same man to tears? After all, even Aphex TwinвЂ™s most soothing ambient works often made him unplug my CD player, as if their nontraditional musical forms might damage our wiring. It just confused me to see my father similarly moved. Her melodies recursed and interwound her vocals shimmered and shone, at once new and old, alien and familiar. I was mesmerized by the folding synthscapes of вЂњCaribbean BlueвЂќ or вЂњSumiregusa (Wild Violet),вЂќ which hit my childhood ears like probes from a far-flung planet. I, a youthful devotee of ambient music, loved Enya for her place in that genreвЂ™s canon. The global success of this mГ©lange of Irish traditional music and new-age electronica was unlikely given that the bulwark of her fandom, in Ireland at least, appeared to be people like my father: rank traditionalists entering middle age, few of whom would have countenanced synthesizers, arpeggiated strings or heavy reverb in any other aural context. EnyaвЂ™s music is suffused with an aura of mysticism so nebulous it borders on the occult nevertheless it enraptured a man so Catholic he would interrupt family holidays with cheerful visits to Marian shrines. Her music wasnвЂ™t like anything else he listened to, but then, itвЂ™s not much like the music anyone else makes either. My fatherвЂ™s fascination with Enya was mysterious. But none of those artists struck me like my fatherвЂ™s personal favorite, Enya. The cheerful ribaldry of the Dubliners, Christy MooreвЂ™s вЂњLive at the PointвЂќ and the earnest, heart-tugging confessionals of Eleanor McEvoy and Mary Black all soundtracked our winding trips through the unending swatches of green that formed the Irish countryside. Many of these would be familiar to any Irishman from that time. On the long drives through Ireland that peppered my childhood like bouts of flu, my father played songs from a small pool of classic albums.