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Jens Gad is a
world-renowned musician, writer and producer perhaps best
known for his 10-year association with Enigma, the musical
project of multi-platinum producer Michael Cretu, which has
been responsible for bringing New Age sensibilities into the
world of dance clubs with a succession of highly praised
albums since their 1991 superhit, “Sadeness”. Jens—a
passionate guitarist, percussionist and composer—has also
worked on a number of other internationally successful
projects and today spends the majority of his time producing
and creating new musical visions at his state-of-the-art
studio located on the beautiful Spanish island of Ibiza, hub
of the wildly popular Mediterranean dance club movement. His
latest solo effort is Le Spa Sonique, the 2006 album
offering luxurious relaxation. Jens’ musical project,
Achillea, is joined by Helene Horlyck, who appeared on the
2005 album The Nine Worlds, and Luisa Fernandez, appearing
on the 2007 album Amadas Estrellas.Helene Horlyck began
singing classical music at the tender age of ten. After many
years of classical training, the singer, who these days
lives in London, has also garnered a good deal of critical
acclaim and experience with her unique brand of improvised
musical stylings.
Helene and Jens
both share a deep and abiding connection with their common
ancestry and the mythology of their Scandinavian homeland.
Thrilled by each others talents, they came together to found
Achillea and co-create a sophisticated chill-out journey
through The Nine Worlds of traditional Norse myth, carried
by Helene's uniquely sensitive classical voice and Jen's
trademark emotional solo guitar. There is an enchanting
story behind each of these songs based on archaic poems and
mythology—a world filled with enchantment and wonder.
In order to
transform these fascinating stories into equally fascinating
music, Jens used his far-reaching experience in music
production to develop a rather unconventional process for
creating this exceptional series of tracks. He encouraged
Helene to improvise for hours on the most diverse musical
backgrounds - partly singing in Latin and ancient Swedish -
in order to develop a variety of new melodies. In this
manner he successfully captured the spontaneity of her
passionate singing. He then composed the music around the
vocal recordings, using Helene's compelling voice like a
distinctive solo instrument. The result is totally unique:
crafting a magnificently alluring high-tech sound interwoven
with sublime archaic melodies; extremely sensual singing is
contrasted with delicately bluesy guitar playing and slow
sexy grooves carry finely woven sonic textures. The music of
Achillea is both stimulating and calming, enlivening yet
relaxing, full of peace, beauty and magic.
Luisa Fernandez
grew up in Galicia, Spain, and discovered her passion for
singing early. She is one of nine brothers and sisters and
at every family event she was lifted up onto the table and
she sang and danced—ending up entertaining the whole party.
Her talent was officially discovered in a contest at the age
of 15. A deal with Warner Brothers and her first single hits
in the disco era in Europe followed. After meeting her
future husband, they formed the duo “Luisa Fernandez and
Peter Kent” and had several European pop hits in Spanish,
amongst them Solo por ti, that can be heard on European
radio stations even today.
During this time
they moved to the island of Ibiza, Spain, where Luisa met
Jens Gad. At that time, Jens was completely involved in the
Enigma 4 album production and too busy to start new
projects. Their creative collaboration started several years
later when Jens’ own studio on Ibiza was finished. Jens
describes, “We started using Luisa’s Spanish poems and
stories and made theme-songs out of them. We wanted to avoid
pop vocal-elements and instead felt we were on a journey to
discover archaic/ethnic depths in Luisa‘s voice that she
hadn’t used before.” From this collaberation was born
Achillea’s latest creation, Amadas Estrellas. |
