Reverse: 1999 - Reset (Enigma EP) // Reaction & Analysis

[00:00:00]Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to another Reverse 1999 reaction. Today we have Enigma's EP reset. The only real reason I'm getting to this one is because I just pulled Enigma a few days ago and I was like, this will be fun.

[00:00:12]So, I'm going to do this video, I guess.

[00:00:15]That's That's really the only reason. I don't even think I saw a comment about this one. There might have been one or two given it was the recent event, but I didn't even look. Honestly, I just want to hear what this theme is. Now that I've got the character, I'm like, "Ooh, what's going on here?" So, without further ado, let's go.

[00:00:34]>> [music] >> Ooh.

[00:00:44]Ooh.

[00:00:55]>> [singing] >> Huh, this is smooth.

[00:00:59]What?

[00:01:00]>> [music] >> I don't know much about Enigma yet.

[00:01:10]So, I don't know entirely what I was expecting, but this is smoother than I thought.

[00:01:17]>> [music] [music] >> Ooh.

[00:01:31]Ooh, hello solo.

[00:01:55]>> [music] >> I don't know what kind of like piano sampler or something's in there, but that sounds really neat.

[00:02:06]Slightly detuned, slightly out of place.

[00:02:41]>> [music] >> That vocalist fits really well, too.

[00:02:55]Not just in tone, but the subtle harmonies in there, the layering of the voice.

[00:03:10]Well, this gave me some answers to the story for the character already.

[00:03:23]>> [singing] [music] [music] >> Ooh, nice little lift resolution there at the end, too.

[00:03:40]Man, again, I I went into this not really understanding much about the character, and often times there are EPs that reflect the character perfectly well, and it just kind of does an overview. I think this went a little bit deeper. The visuals definitely helped there, but this song gave me a lot more insight to what Enigma's like and the why, like the emotional turmoil in there. It's not aggressive, it's not hard to figure out. The character themselves isn't like tormented in that like angry way.

[00:04:13]They're just trying to breathe and go with whatever flow is left in their lives given the final visual of that one. That adds a lot to the answer of why they're feeling this way and what that flow is is still kind of confusing, I think, to Enigma. So, just kind of a living with that and trying to process it constantly is a lot and again reflects very well here. This was really pretty. It actually reminded me, I know I'm going off about this already, I haven't even turned off the overlay yet.

[00:04:43]Um, this is This reminded me a lot of DM DOKURO's music actually. A little bit more like smooth jazz influence in this, obviously, but DM DOKURO has a similar sort of feel to their music when they're writing about these like inner turmoil feelings. This like really deep contemplative sound that this song also got really well. So, I'm going to stop yapping here and we'll get to the other stuff now. This song moves in a way that easily reflects a character who doesn't really know what the next step is. And what I mean by that is for the first like minute or so of the song, the most movement we're really doing is between the F and an [music] E flat and that's literally it. It's just between those two and that's a really nice balance to hit. It's not complex at all, just bouncing between the two chords. This isn't something that usually happens in songs. Most of the time you're going between at least three. So, when there is a moment where the character is kind of locked into that bouncing back and forth. There's an emotional reason.

[00:05:51]There's a narrative purpose as to why.

[00:05:54]And that makes sense for a character who feels stuck like this one. And then we do get some movement. It's not like the song stays there the whole time. It does move, but it starts to move [music] in a more linear way. We have C get introduced, D minor, E minor, we have the F come back and also G and A minor. These are all just literally white keys right next to each other. And this is actually in the key of A minor, which is the relative key of C, which means all of the white keys are what the chord would be. There are exceptions to that, obviously. Things like the E flat you'd notice aren't there, but that's exactly why [music] it has a little bit of like a misstep feel when you're listening to it there. So, having that bouncing between the F and the E flat is already showing that disconnect. And when we start including things like the G and the A minor, it's showing more of a movement. We have like this literal linear movement up, like I mentioned. It's just moving up from there. And we do have a bunch of sevens in here as well for like the F major 7, C major 7, plenty of sevens, which in the case of A minor and C is basically just skipping an extra note and putting an extra one at the very top. [music] That's pretty much all it is cuz they all work together so beautifully. You can kind of just do that. But what makes this so interesting to me isn't that linear movement. It's the linear movement that makes another jump into something similar to that E flat that we had in the beginning. We go up from G to A minor, down to G, >> [music] >> G sharp.

[00:07:32]Where the hell did that come from, you know? So, now we have another shifting emotion in this song. So, we have now two moments in this song, one that we started with, that was already kind of jostling that contemplative feeling, and now we have something that's challenging it.

[00:07:49]Because it doesn't want to go back up to the A minor, it feels like it needs to go somewhere else, and it doesn't tell you what that is at all. This song doesn't get there until the very end. I love this song's writing. This is so cool, because we have that relationship, right? So, we have >> [music] >> But then, when we get to the end of the song, we have that relationship of the G resolved into the A, like I mentioned at the end of the song. I love that lifted resolution. That's what it was trying to do. He kept falling just shy of where he wanted to be.

[00:08:25]>> [music] >> And then the realization hit. We have a resolution up into a chord that also doesn't fit within the key, but that doesn't matter, because we've had two of those. He's been trying to find his place this whole time. Enigma has started to figure it out. And I think that that is really [ __ ] neat. A perfect rendition of this character's morality, their their compass of who they are and where they're going to be, what happened to them, and that struggle of finding out why it's happening to them. Until the very last note, where we have that final moment where he's like, "Aha!" And now we have the end of the story. A perfect song for a character.

[00:09:04]Again, I don't know that much about Enigma, but through this video and seeing what was on screen, and then this song spelling it out in the easiest way possible, lyrically was also helpful, but I think really the most of the explanation goes for the music for me in this one, even though the lyrics were basically telling you what the character was feeling. The music and the structure of the chords was, as you probably just realized with me explaining it, offers so much additional context if you're paying attention to it. You don't have to be. This could be a lot of subtext stuff. You could be listening to it and just go, "Why does this sound like he's understanding?" Now you know why. This is why I love music. Music is so cool.

[00:09:47]It can do anything at all times and it always ends up at a very interesting location. Whether or not that's where you think it should be, there's usually a purpose to end where it ends up, you know? Especially in character EPs that are designed to be the sort of reflective piece and explain the character. This just works really so. I think that's about all I got to say on this one. A beautiful song. Love it.

[00:10:10]Obviously really appreciate where they went with this one, the directions they took, but that's about all I got to say.

[00:10:15]So thank you all so very much for watching. If you enjoyed this video and you want me to get to something else from Reverse 1999, by all means drop in the comments below and I will do my best as always to get to those. But if you don't want to do any of that, maybe just want to follow me and support me for more stuff coming in the future, you know how to do all that and I'll see all of you in the next video.

[00:10:31]Goodbye.

[00:10:37]>> [music]