Live gigs are being considered by the Enya triumvirate – with live in-studio recordings of the big tracks from her back catalogue providing a potential starting point…
Enya has revealed to Hot Press that she is considering the possibility of doing live gigs. But the likelihood is that the potential live show will be tested and developed via a live in-studio recording, with long-time producer Nicky Ryan in charge of proceedings.
“We talked about using The Metropolitan in New York to just even one concert that can be screened all over the world,” Enya reveals. “But to hear it first is the most important thing: to hear ‘Orinoco Flow’ or ‘Caribbean Blue’ as they would sound live. We’ve done some really great TV shows for Japan and you have the string sections – ten cellos and twenty violins – playing the music and you hear all the parts and the choir. It’s time to experiment with getting the sound on stage.”
While nothing is yet written in stone, there’s also talk of ensconcing themselves in the world’s most famous studio.
“Nicky has this idea of recording all the hits live,” Enya reveals. “He’s a big Beatles fan, so he’d love to do it in Abbey Road.”
The bumper 2016 Hot Press Annual has Enya – who was christened Eithne Ní Bhraonáin – on the cover. The interview, conducted by Hot Press editor Niall Stokes, delves deep into the enigmatic Irish star’s creative process.
Enya says she didn’t properly know where her new Dark Sky Island album was taking her until the conclusion of the sessions.
“It’s only when you finish the eleven songs – the eleven stories and what they are saying – that you know,” she reflects. “You understand how I work with Nicky Ryan. I write a song. We work on it for a while and then we leave it. You mightn’t go back to that song for three months or six months. When you go back, that’s where you try and see what the emotional feeling was, what was in the melody?”
Noting that, “It’s really important to live your life right now; you never know what tomorrow will bring”, Enya says she’s keener than ever to perform her first solo gigs.
The article, which runs over six pages of the Annual, offers unique new insights into Enya’s development – and also reveals the origin of the star’s name. Nicky Ryan recalls that he was concerned that the world might have difficulty knowing how to pronounce the name Eithne.
“I came up with the idea of a phonetic spelling,” he reveals. “E-N-Y-A. How much easier is that to understand and to pronounce? It was something that I felt we had to do, but it made sense in every way.”
The in-depth interview is available only in the 2016 Hot Press Annual.
16 December 2015 at 8:50 PM
I’m so happy that Enya ” is considering the possibility of doing live gigs”. I’ve been hearing this phrase since the year 2000. I think in 20 years she’ll be still considering that possibility… Why does she give her fans hope that they’ll see her live when we know it’ll never happen? Why is she doing that?
16 December 2015 at 9:27 PM
May it be that Enya will go live… :x
16 December 2015 at 9:34 PM
@Frank I know, the first time she said they were really looking into it was in 2000! I linked the article because of its tie-in with the full interview that should be interesting since the interviewer has done great pieces on her already.
17 December 2015 at 11:52 AM
I really admire ‘Hot Press’ and Niall Stokes for their consistent admiration of Enya’s music ever since the best article on Enya I ever read by Niall Stokes around the release of ‘Watermark’. Now it sounds like we’ll be treated to a similarly great article again.
As for considerations, plans, and possibilities – well, they are mentioned as reliably as questions about a tour every time a new album is released. My best friend, who is also from Donegal, organised a fantastic day trip away for us planning everything perfectly from car hire, to route, to venues, to destination. He has spent the last twenty years talking about doing the same thing again, sometime.
21 December 2015 at 4:28 PM
What’s going on?
I’ve found three opportunities to listen to ‘Dark Sky Island’ since its arrival at my home, and on two of those occasions the music has been interrupted by telephone calls.
I plan to put that right in the next couple of days though while on holidays. Nothing but Enya’s new album, my copy of the ‘Hot Press Christmas Annual 2016’ which arrived this morning, and a glass of something smooth, sweet, & festive.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lyhbtoef2gejhuc/me3.png?dl=0
21 December 2015 at 10:15 PM
Last Wednesday I received a phone call from a record shop in town, telling me my Enya – Dark Sky Island CD was there. I put on the helmet and boots and drove the bike to the city centre. I paid cash and finally got my hands on Dark Sky Island.
As soon as I returned home I unpacked the thin plastic foil and to my slight disappointment I realized that the Dark Sky Island deluxe edition’s packaging is made of paper. You may ask, “what did you expect then?”.
Well, I don’t know; maybe a box of polished limestone, rare granite, a mix of anodized titanium and gorilla-glass… I dunno. But soon enough I realized that I just bought a CD, as the ones ordinary people buy in tens.
I went to my car and inserted the CD in the car stereo. There, I can easily enjoy the sound on a fairly good quality. And I was surprised as soon as I played Echoes in Rain; the real work behind the audio mixing and mastering was revealed. That was a real sensual pleasure! But I wouldn’t enjoy a second track. I save such pleasures for my Nirvana time and lately I’ve been busy and had little time to shift my life into a ‘nirvana mode’.
Then I ripped the CD tracks into computer files and had a brief overview of all the music on the CD; and I realized that it was totally worth to have paid those extra cents for those beautiful extra three tracks of the Deluxe Edition.
Now that I have the CD in my hands I feel relaxed; all I need now is drive my life into those small, precious, ‘eternity’ moments which will build upon those similar ‘moments’ of my past, moments which were ‘dressed’ into Enya music and timelessness.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p4cu78m8to0z792/DSC01407.me.tmp..JPG?dl=0
22 December 2015 at 9:43 PM
Delighted you have finally got ‘Dark Sky Island’ J. May you enjoy discovering the many hidden beauties contained within at your leisure. If I might be bold as to speak for others, I suspect there are quite a few of us who are somewhat disappointed at the cardboard presentation folder for the deluxe version of the album. But hey, it could be worse! My worst nightmares imagine a situation where there would be no CD format at all, but we would all be forced to purchase some form of download. Heaven forbid!
On a separate note, you have achieved more success than I with your Dropbox image. On opening the link, I was presented with a 404 message. I suspect this maybe because not all of your url was hyperlinked with the characters ‘..JPG?dl=0’ escaping linkage. In my case, the Dropbox image is not opening at all – error message or otherwise. However, I copied and pasted both our full url links onto a blank Word document, and successfully opened them both from there. Does WordPress support Dropbox, I wonder?
Your image is a very interesting one. Is that a mixing desk of some sort, (which I presume is you pictured), sitting at? And what is that lovely looking album pictured to your right? And who is Enya? Prey, do tell! Lol!! :)
Should you J. or any other readers wish to view my Dropbox images, I suggest copying and pasting the link onto a Word Document or equivalent, and opening from there.
27 December 2015 at 8:46 PM
Brian, probably the WordPress auto-hyperlink function is confused by the two sequential full stop punctuation. So you chose right and copied the whole link. Regarding your dropbox link, it opens correctly from your enya.sk comment. Enya fan and the ‘real thing’. A picture to last!
I shot that picture at a small ‘so seventies’ piece of furniture in my study room, upon which I fetched myself a very basic studio bench. Some background lighting and a little LED flashlight shining upon the mixer gave the picture a fancier hue gradient.