DNTEL - Enya Mixes CS

cene legend Jimmy Tamborello aka DNTEL finally gives his fabled album-sized act of Enya-worship a proper release, newly mixed for A Colourful Storm’s boutique Fleetway Tapes sublabel and released for the first time since it started floating around blogs in 2010.

Enya’s influence has grown exponentially over the years; what was once considered a bit passé, soon becoming the stuff of legend. Her early soundtrack work and first solo albums propelled her to superstardom, accompanying a surge of interest in so-called Celtic culture and folklore, but soon saddled with the (then) dreaded "new age" tag. Her fusion of sacred music, traditional folk and atmospheric electronics was derided by much of the music press, labeled as dated and corny. 

Fast forward a few years and Enya's prophetic sound was looped thru countless early rave dubplates, The Fugees sampled 'Boadicea' on 'Ready or Not’ and since then she's rarely been far from view, referenced by everyone from Panda Bear and Lil B to Rihanna and The Weeknd, sailing (away) through cloud rap and beyond. Of course, her impact on contemporary experimental music, particularly the vocal-heavy work of artists like Lau Nau, Julianna Barwick, Malibu and Dania, is now fully acknowledged, but back in 2010, Tamborello was an early adopter, acknowledging her inspiration on his own output (as both Dntel and as part of The Postal Service) with this suite of screwed reworks.

‘Enya Mixes’ opens with a curvaceous edit of 'After Ventus', the plasticky penultimate track from 1991's under-loved 'Shepherd Moons'. Enya's eddying vocal harmonies are left mostly intact, but Tamborello strips away the jerky instrumentation, letting reverb-drenched echoes swirl into an inverted 4/4 like some low-lit Malibu production. For the next half hour those unmistakable staccato FM synths do their thing on a redux of 'Boadicea', possibly Enya's best-known early track, followed by a BoC-style take on 'One By One', the track that Rihanna sampled on 'Fading' and then - perhaps best of all - a stunning 'Aldebaran’, turned into a Drexciyan wonder.

Legends, both of them.
–Boomkat