Two outstanding artists of Danish origin have combined their remarkable talents to explore their Viking roots and put it in a new musical perspective: as a writer and co-producer Jens Gad, born to Danish parents in Munich/Germany on August 26th 1966, has contributed immensely to the global success of Enigma, the project of multi-platinum producer Michael Cretu, which has brought New Age sensibilities into the world of dance clubs with a succession of highly praised albums since their 1991 superhit „Sadness“. Jens, a passionate guitarist, drummer and composer, has also worked on a number of other internationally successful projects such as albums by Andru Donalds or Milli Vanilli. Today Jens Gad has his own top standard studio on the beautiful Spanish island of Ibiza.

Helene Horlyck has started to sing classical music at the tender age of ten. After many years of classical training, the singer, who nowadays lives in London, has also gained a lot of live experience with improvised music.
Helene and Jens, though both not actually living in Denmark, share a deep interest in the ancestry and mythology of their Scandinavian homeland. Thrilled by each others talents, they decided to create a sophisticated chill out journey through the traditional „Nine worlds of Viking myths“, carried by Helene’s uniquely sensitive classical voice and the emotional solo guitar of Jens. There is a story behind each song.

All of these are based on Viking mythology and often on archaic poems – a world inhabitated by seers and seeresses, elves, the historic monks of Lindisfarne, rune masters, giants and gods such as Odin, a world, that was marked by places like Cape Porcupine, Labrador, or Staraja Ladoga, the first Viking staging post on the trade route to Russia, or the island Sanday in Orkney.

In order to transform these fascinating stories into equally fascinating music, Jens Gad used his vast producers experience to develop an unusual work process: He encouraged Helene to improvise for hours on most diverse musical backgrounds – partly singing in Latin and in ancient Swedish – and thus to develop a variety of new melodies. This way he captured the spontaneity of her singing – then he would compose the music around the recordings from these singing sessions, using Helene’s voice like a kind of solo instrument. The result is totally unique: highly attractive state-of-the-art-sounds meet with archaic melodies, extremely sensual singing is contrasted with delicately bluesy guitar playing, slow sexy grooves carry finely woven sonic textures. The music of Achillea is both stimulating and calming, entertaining but relaxing, full of peace and beauty, but also strikingly vital.

©2005 BSC Music crew