Achillea

Jens Gad is a world-renowned musician, writer and producer perhaps best known for his 10-year association with Enigma, the musical project of multi-platinum producer Michael Cretu, which has been responsible for bringing 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, percussionist and composer—has also worked on a number of other internationally successful projects and today spends the majority of his time producing and creating new musical visions at his state-of-the-art studio located on the beautiful Spanish island of Ibiza, hub of the wildly popular Mediterranean dance club movement. His latest solo effort is Le Spa Sonique, the 2006 album offering luxurious relaxation. Jens’ musical project, Achillea, is joined by Helene Horlyck, who appeared on the 2005 album The Nine Worlds, and Luisa Fernandez, appearing on the 2007 album Amadas Estrellas.
Helene Horlyck began singing classical music at the tender age of ten. After many years of classical training, the singer, who these days lives in London, has also garnered a good deal of critical acclaim and experience with her unique brand of improvised musical stylings.
Helene and Jens both share a deep and abiding connection with their common ancestry and the mythology of their Scandinavian homeland. Thrilled by each others talents, they came together to found Achillea and co-create a sophisticated chill-out journey through The Nine Worlds of traditional Norse myth, carried by Helene's uniquely sensitive classical voice and Jen's trademark emotional solo guitar. There is an enchanting story behind each of these songs based on archaic poems and mythology—a world filled with enchantment and wonder.
In order to transform these fascinating stories into equally fascinating music, Jens used his far-reaching experience in music production to develop a rather unconventional process for creating this exceptional series of tracks. He encouraged Helene to improvise for hours on the most diverse musical backgrounds - partly singing in Latin and ancient Swedish - in order to develop a variety of new melodies. In this manner he successfully captured the spontaneity of her passionate singing. He then composed the music around the vocal recordings, using Helene's compelling voice like a distinctive solo instrument. The result is totally unique: crafting a magnificently alluring high-tech sound interwoven with sublime archaic melodies; extremely sensual singing is contrasted with delicately bluesy guitar playing and slow sexy grooves carry finely woven sonic textures. The music of Achillea is both stimulating and calming, enlivening yet relaxing, full of peace, beauty and magic.
Luisa Fernandez grew up in Galicia, Spain, and discovered her passion for singing early. She is one of nine brothers and sisters and at every family event she was lifted up onto the table and she sang and danced—ending up entertaining the whole party. Her talent was officially discovered in a contest at the age of 15. A deal with Warner Brothers and her first single hits in the disco era in Europe followed. After meeting her future husband, they formed the duo “Luisa Fernandez and Peter Kent” and had several European pop hits in Spanish, amongst them Solo por ti, that can be heard on European radio stations even today.During this time they moved to the island of Ibiza, Spain, where Luisa met Jens Gad. At that time, Jens was completely involved in the Enigma 4 album production and too busy to start new projects. Their creative collaboration started several years later when Jens’ own studio on Ibiza was finished. Jens describes, “We started using Luisa’s Spanish poems and stories and made theme-songs out of them. We wanted to avoid pop vocal-elements and instead felt we were on a journey to discover archaic/ethnic depths in Luisa‘s voice that she hadn’t used before.” From this collaberation was born Achillea’s latest creation, Amadas Estrellas.