I have always been a devout fan of Enigma as I tend to favor music styles such as ambient, new age, world, and music of the avant-guarde. Enigma seems to be able to straddle both the edge of music while still allowing itself to be accessed by random listerners looking for something fresh and new.

So about VOYAGEUR, there are many mixed reactions so I decided to let the album grow on me for a week or so before writing anything. Here are my thoughts:

Enigma has grown and moved away from silky ambient sampled themes and is marching toward a world beat mixed with an edgier rhythm and more diverse vocals. A fantastic leap into something new for such an established project like Enigma.

The album opens up with a warm muted piano laced under soft sounds rushing suddenly with an urgent beat. "From East to West", the intro, may be the announcement that Enigma is about to move forward into the future. Then in "Voyageur" a guitar plays while a strange meloncholy baseline meaders from nowhere. Quivering sampled voices bring an eerie feel to the song.

"Incognito" comes on with a looped vocal with a steady beat and a far off male voice singing. Next is an ode to a tarot card in "The Page of Cups" with sounds of birds and perhaps a far off boombox which is drowned away by slow beats of trance music.

"Boum-Boum" is most likely to be a single. A sorta Euro-dance/outer space boogie with a female voice singing about longing so much her heart goes "boum"! Suddenly a male voice responds and the beat is carried deeper. A great track! This song is begging to be remixed!!

"Total Eclipse of the Moon" brings some synth strings and classical tones and a beautiful song. If you like Peter Gabriel, you will like this song! A muted grinding rhythm finds itself a voice "In the Shadow, In the Light". Very understated...perfect!

The muted piano returns for an ambient dance sonata in "The Piano". Then the album finds fruition with "Following the Sun" a sweet musical number with both male and female vocals taking the album from start to finish...from east to west...following the sun...following the future.

Remember listening to the first Enigma CD and thinking "this music is so on the edge and new"? Well listen to this with an open mind and you will be hearing again music that is new!

Enjoy this CD!

During the first few listens, it was difficult for me to suppress the question, "This is what I waited three years for?" And indeed, Michael Cretu, the self-proclaimed perfectionist-genius, certainly took his time nursing this project along for the past few years.

However, it misses where some of his previous CD's scored big, particularly in the category of phonic revelation. For those well-versed in Enigma music, I won't need to explain where this CD excels (it's part of the Enigma formula). But here's why it's only worth my four stars.

"Voyageur" doesn't make any real acheivements towards Cretu's famed electronic porgression, but rather appears to enjoy some degree of complacency in the sound of 2000's "The Screen Behind the Mirror." Because of Enigma's previous milestones, "Voyageur" comes off as remarkably intelligent, yet unexpectedly anticlimactic. After reading some of Cretu's pre-release interviews, I was convinced this latest CD would be spilling over with foreign sounds and an intriguing, new direction. Not so.

The sound is strongly reminiscent of "The Screen..." with sparse, obscure hints of 1996's devastatingly genius "Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi." This is not to say that I was expecting a duplication of Cretu's past accomplishments. To be sure, there will never be another "The Child In Us." But I was hoping for more embellishment and expansion of that same vein which was expertly tapped on Enigma's previous two albums. Perhaps the only clear standout on "Voyageur" is the radio-ready "Following The Sun" with its creative marriage of Sandra's and Michael's vocals.

And speaking of vocals. By the end of this brief CD (an insatiable 47 minutes long), Michael's digitally-encoded vox had seemed to dominate many of the tracks, and the rare exclusivity they enjoyed on earlier records was waning. The instrumentation is another component that, to me, wasn't explored in typical Enigma fashion. For example, the programmed beats were disappointingly contemporary. Though this aspect was modified from prior recordings, it provided a surprisingly commercialized sound that I wasn't prepared for (and am still trying to accept while listening to the new CD).

This CD, for its few predictabilities, is still leaps and bounds ahead of at least 80 percent of the other leading brands of electronica out there today. Michael Cretu remains a musical player (if not an icon) to be reckoned with, and to a large extent he will always possess a certain midas touch when it comes to synthetic recordings.

Bottom line: This is still a landmark in musical evolution, and "Voyageur," though not entirely different from other Enigma CD's, should still be required listening for those interested in electronic composition.

I am an insatiable Enigma fan. This is my favorite group of all time. I bought MXC before it ever hit it big, and I marked on my calendar with excitement for the every three years Enigma puts out a record. I own every album, every remix and every DVD. This album is good, but it is missing all the brilliant layering of the earlier albums. "The Screen Behind the Mirror" keeps getting degraded on these reviews but it is a far better album than Voyageur. At least the signature Enigma sound is intact on that album. Cretu has become FAR too in love with his voice on this album and it actually ruins some otherwise good songs. Also, the lyrics are unbelievably cheesy at times. The album will grow on you, but it is still an overall disappointment.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GO BACK TO YOUR OLD SOUND ENIGMA! You can still "explore" the boundaries of music with your old sound intact.

Having heard all of Enigma's albums prior to this, it seems to me that Michael Cretu has reached a crossroads--but not one that I'd particularly hoped for, myself. Gone, it seems, are the musings upon life and the vast, sweeping, and graceful sound I've previously associated with Enigma. What has replaced it is something that rides dangerously close to a very average, bland sort of techno. Voyageur is not a total loss; don't get me wrong. Mr. Cretu does get points for moving forward in terms of experimention with different moods than those previously heard; while other albums have had a much more optimistic feel by the end, and have also been somewhat cyclical in nature, this one has a rather darker character; the final outro was certainly a surprise to me. There's something grittier in the mixing, a heavy distortion that sometimes works--sometimes seems like ovrekill. I do give Mr. Cretu credit for the distortions on his own vocals, which have quite an interesting effect.

Gone are the samples of world music and Gregorian chant. Although there are no *directly* sampled loops, there is one intriguing "tribute" buried on the title track, to the keyboard playing of Pink Floyd's Richard Wright on the studio version of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun". This is the one place where the distortion of the sound makes complete sense; if you listen to the distortions in Mr. Wright's initial playing, it's very clear that Mr. Cretu has emulated it down to the last detail.

Speaking of Pink Floyd, in bands like that, the shift towards a heavier, more brooding atmosphere often signals a move towards a more serious approach to music--but with Enigma, I'm not entirely convinced that's happening. In fact, I'm quite shocked that something with such infantile lyrics as "Boum-Boum" was released with the Enigma name--if I want something with so little substance (and I do not), I'll turn on a "Top 40" station. "My heart goes boom-boom-boom...every time I think of you!" repeated ad infinitum...come on, Britney Spears can do better! "Weightless" comes fairly close to a similar degree of emptiness, although *nothing* beats "Boum-Boum" in the vapid department.

That is not to say this album and new direction are wholly without merit: "Incognito"/"Page of Cups" is certainly an interesting foray into darker territory for Enigma. "Total Eclipse", "In the Shadow and the Light", and most particularly the ethereal and beautiful track, "The Piano", will probably be the most satisfying for fans of the classic Enigma. I admit, also, that when I hear a piece like "The Look of Today", I wonder if perhaps Mr. Cretu *has* decided to move towards serious social commentary, even satire. While "The Look of Today" wears the mask of empty techno, there's something quite biting in his delivery.

The trouble is, he needs to be careful of just how much of this vacuousness he allows into his work or he may lose his identity in the process. What is also annoying to me as a listener is the *inconsistency* of quality--something I've never heard before from Enigma, not even on the debut album as is the case with most artists. I notice that while the album begins as all Enigma albums do with that typical "signature riff", it's abandoned at the end...a clear signal of a shift towards something else. The problem is, what will that transition be to, when it's complete? Overall, Voyageur is an album that, in many ways, is hovering upon the brink--between light and dark, between satire and sellout. Does the cold feeling I get at the end indicate Enigma's success, or its failure?

I can only hope that in his next venture, Mr. Cretu will properly assess the merits and deficiencies of Voyageur, and respond accordingly...I hope he's thought out where he's headed.

Like many of the reviewers here I, too, own all five Enigma cds and think that producer/multi-instrumentalist Michael Cretu has never lost his talent for creating solid ambient music. However, it would be nice for him to incorporate a variety of sounds, rhythms and meters because "Voyageuer" and the other four cds by Enigma sound very similiar. Cretu keeps reinventing the peanut butter sandwich (it tastes good, but so does turkey, chicken and pastrami). As with each Enigma cd, there is half an album's worth of solid material. "Voyageur's" most successful tracks are "From East To West", "Voyageur", "Incognito", "Boum-Boum", "Total Eclipse Of The Moon" (a nod to Pink Floyd perhaps?), "Look Of Today" (which completely sounds like ABC's 1982 hit "The Look Of Love") and "Following The Sun". The rest of the tracks are truly forgettable and album filler. "Voyageur" is definitely an improvement over 2000's "The Screen Behind The Mirror" and 1996's "Le Roi Est Mort--Vive Le Roi!" I just think Cretu is capable of more and he's spent 13 years attempting to give us a great cd, but they end up just being good and reliable.