Enya started singing, and sings like an angel

A couple of weeks ago, on September 11, he died Nicky Ryanthe manufacturer of each solo album of Enya. He was 79 years old. In addition to being the manufacturer, Ryan was also the manager of the Irish musician, accompanied her throughout his career, in all his successes, starting from the famous “Orinoco flow”.

Nicky Ryan It was the manager of the Clannada Celtic folk group originally from the County of Donegal composed of several family members of Enya. After a short experience with i Clannad, Eithne pádraigín ní bhraonáin (in Gaelico) or Enya Patricia O ‘Brennan (in English), he left the band in the early 1980s with the intention of embarking on a solo career. Ryan, with his wife Rome, followed her. Enya wrote music, the writer and poet Rome Ryan The texts.

Leave the Clannad, Enya He moved to the Ryan house and began to record in their home study. He recorded demo that Rome then sent to the film producers in the hope that his dreamy songs could adapt to the images of the screen. In 1984 a Enya The soundtrack for the comedy was finally asked to write “The Frog Prince” (in Italian, ‘The Ranocchio Prince’). In 1987 he released what his first album can be considered, the soundtrack for the documentary in six parts of the BBC “The Celts”which was then republished in 1992 with the title “Enya”.

The album liked the president of the British Warner Music Rob Dickins which he offered the almost unknown Enya A substantial record contract. “The record company thought that I was crazy, but sometimes artists are hired to make money, sometimes artists are hired to make music”, it was his comment. Guided by noble intentions, Dickins also would never have distancely imagined that Enya would have had such success and would earn Warner a lot of money by selling almost 100 million albums all over the world.

The song he launched Enya towards the stars it was “Orinoco flow”single from his second album, released in 1988, “Watermark”. It happened that the demo of “Watermark” were recorded at the Aigle Studios of Nicky Ryan In Dublin, but Dickins suggested that the songs were digitally re-recorded in London. Nicky ed Enya Then they left Dublin and arrived at the horns of the horns, a recording space that would give the name to the most famous song of Enya. When the demos of the songs were completed and the album was practically ready, everyone felt that something was missing to be really complete. To Enya Then an idea came: a sequence of agreements accompanied by a simple phrase repeated continuously: “Sail Away”. Rome Ryan He added a text.

In an interview from 2008 Dickins said: “When I put Enya under contract, Nicky asked me: ‘You will not put pressure on individuals, right?’ It was not that kind of music. ‘We have the single!’.

A distinctive feature of the sound of Enya It is the use of overlapping voices, a result that Nicky has achieved in the studio through a multi -traces stratification process, without the help of any sampling. To create the ethereal choir of the song, hundreds of vocal take were recorded on a recorder, poured on a second recorder and incorporated into the final mix. The sound engineer James Bartonwho mixed “Orinoco flow”he recalled the works on the song in an interview of 2018 with The Ringer: “Enya is very good at building agreements with her voice. Really good. We discussed it in the Royal Room, then she went out and started singing. And sings like an angel.”

Published in 1988 as the main single of the album
“Watermark”
,
“Orinoco flow”
He climbed the rankings almost immediately, remaining for three weeks in first place in Great Britain, conquering the first place in Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland and the Netherlands and even breakdowns overseas in the United States. Speaking with the British newspaper The Guardian Dickins remembered: “In the release week, the Tower Records telephoned to say that when they had played the album in the shop, they had sold 45 copies: almost all in the shop had bought the disc. It was an unprecedented thing. It went from position 29 to 5, then to number one and we sold a lot of albums. It was a real passage from the stars to the stars.”

Arrived in an era when New Age music had not yet entered the mainstream,
“Orinoco flow”
It was a completely unexpected number one, merging Celtic mysticism with film synthesizers. But despite his oddities, in his profound he was a pop song, with the repeated refrain “Sail Away” who immediately entered his head and did not leave you even after a single listening. In 1988 asked account a
Nicky Ryan

Of the unexpected success of the song, he replied: “He shows that people want something new, and it seems that this week he touched something hot and different, instead of yet another success in Stock-Aitken-Waberman”.