The perhaps most interesting new age music project around is Eric Mouquet’s Deep Projects.

by monkglenn on Itunes I have all the other Deep Forest work, but this one surpasses them all. I learned Brazilian Portuguese to write poetry in that language because it is perfectly suited for expressions of transcendent creativity and beauty. I’d say this is the most favorite album I’ve ever listened to in my 64 years! The keyboard magic, the mixing, and reapplications of samples in exact progression, like an algorhythm that perfects excitement and beauty! (Not an Al Gore Rhythm–but, I bet he would like this! Can’t get much greener!) I have given this as a gift over and over, and recommend it. The effects alone are stupendous, but the performance as a whole is a whole piece, like a “La Boheme”, to me! I’m sorta old to be having “groupie” emotions, but I love Eric Mouquet’s work!

ALBUMS: WORLD MUSIC

DEEP FOREST
Comparsa
PRODUCER: Deep Forest 550 Music 3943

Third album from Deep Forest’s self-described “sound reporters”–Eric Mouquet and Michel Sanchez–is a joyous technicolor explosion of synth-sculpted dance rhythms, and a vibrant contrast to its more monochromatic predecessor, “Boheme.” Their sampled, performed, and remixed tunes–with global influences almost too numerous to distinguish–feature such guest stars as Joe Zawinul, Syrian vocalist Abed Azrie, and Mexican rocker Ana Toroja of Mecano. In a striking set that makes Deep Forest sound more actual and less virtual, highlights include the great Afro-pop hooks and undulating horn charts of “Noonday Sun,” the naive melody and rich vocal harmonies of “Green And Blue,” the massive grooves and raging choral refrains of “Forest Power,” and the rumba-flavored call-and-response of “Radio Belize.”

Edited by Paul Verna

Right under the sun
By Eric Berdin
Keyboards No 117, January 1998
Translated by Florian Seka for Deep In The Jungle

Since 1992, Deep Forest has devoted itself to making us discover the world’s treasure of ethnic chants. Their latest album “Comparsa” proves Deep Forest’s extraordinary mastery of the sampling technique.

It’s no surprise if the names Eric Mouquet or Michel Sanchez don’t sound familiar to you: Deep Forest is more famous abroad than in France, with about three million albums sold throughout the world! Nevertheless, six years of hard work and sample collecting has attracted attention to the northern duo. Big stars like Peter Gabriel, David Byrne and Ryuishi Sakamoto showed their admiration for Deep Forest. Still, the discretion that honors them remains unaltered, and it is with much kindness and simplicity that they accommodated us to touch upon the subject of “Comparsa”, their new sun-coloured album.

Keyboard: After Africa for the first album and Eastern Europe with “Bohème”, you turned your sight towards new horizons for the new album?
Eric Mouquet: We have been traveling a lot the last two years: together as part of our world tour, but also separately. These peregrinations lead us to Cuba, Mexico, Madagascar… Actually a world tour! “Comparsa” is a conclusion to that journey, with a strong emphasis on sunny music.

Michel Sanchez: Most of the tracks are duos between ethnic singers from Cuba and Madagascar. During our journeys, we found a great similarity between chants of those regions, both conveying ideas of joy, rhythm and dance. The idea to mix them forced itself upon us.

Keyboard: This album is rich in meetings.
EM: I think there are more than 40 contributors to “Comparsa”, people that are more or less famous and that talk with their heart. In Belize, a small country of Central America, I met and recorded Marsella Lewis, an extraordinary old woman: big moments of emotion in her pile house! On the album there are several unknown artists but also more famous people like Anna Toroja, singer of the band Mecano -she sings in duo with Abed Azrie-, Joe Zawinul, Wes Madiko. The link between all those people are music, whatever notoriety they have.

MS: I went to Cuba with a friend who is drummer and who knows many local artists. Thanks to his contacts, I met a lot of happy people, living for music and willing to share their culture. Right away, I made them aware of what we were going to do with the samples. I feared some reluctance, but didn’t encounter any!

EM: In Mexico, I also met Jorge Reyes, the famous drummer. Given his perfect knowledge of studio work, the idea of having him in our place in France was natural. Obviously, we didn’t proceed that way for all the people. The result would have been too artificial. To record them in their environment seemed more judicious.

Keyboard: What about your collaboration with Joe Zawinul, a musician that you seem to like a lot?
EM: It was like a dream! Since he was passing through Lille for a concert, we went to see him. Enthusiastic about his performance, we tried to meet him at the end of the show. After a few minutes of hard negotiations with security and the management staff, we were granted access to the cabins. Big surprise! Joe Zawinul warmly welcomed us and he was forever praising our music! The situation was quite embarrassing… Well, at the end of this idyllic meeting, we shared phone numbers. The same evening, at the restaurant, the idea of having him on “Comparsa” appeared. The following day, this suggestion was sent via fax to his hotel. He answered very quickly: given his world tour, he was not able to come to our studio but he suggested to us sending him the tape in New York, so that he could take care of it. We build the track for him and Joe added a synthesizer solo at the end. We are very proud!

MS: What is crazy is that Joe doesn’t want any remuneration! He just wants us to be on his next album!

Keyboard: “Comparsa” sounds more “world music” than the first two albums. Did you use more ethnic instruments?
EM: We worked the same way, but since this sunny music called for different sonorities, like accordion or latin drums for example, all this may give a more acoustic touch on the whole.

MS: Compared to “Bohème”, the tracks are more built like songs: voices are omnipresent, maybe at the expense of the instruments.

Keyboard: How did you sort the samples?
EM: As for the chants that we recorded ourselves, no problem, we knew where to find the good samples. But for the voices from Madagascar, we had to listen to the numerous tapes we were sent.

MS: Timbre takes first place over all other aspects! I remember having some problems in Cuba. I had recorded a singer with a magic and deep voice, but that was not always matching the melody. Back at the studio, I asked myself what I was going to do with it. Finally I worked with the best sample and reworked it. The result turned out to be great: the timbre of the voice and the emotion that sustains it are definitely there! We often have to find compromises.

Keyboard: What devices did you use?
EM: For the voices, the choirs and rhythms, we obviously used samplers: the S3000 and S3200 from Akai. We also use a lot of synthesizers. Actually, as soon as a device comes out, we test it and keep it if we are convinced. We made big use of the Yamaha VLI, and VPI (borrowed for the album), but also the Korg Trinity -since the Z1 was not out at that time- the Clavia Nordlead II, the Hammond B3… and even vocoders from the DigiTech Vocalist or the EMS.

MS: I have a fault that costs me quite a lot. Since a don’t like to use a synth in a multitimbral mode (I prefer to keep the Preset’s original effects, rather than to add external post processing on the performance), i need a lot of devices….

Keyboard: What are your expectations concerning electronic instruments?
MS: I am very curious about the next improvements of keyboards like the Yamaha VLI or the Korg Trinity. I love modeling! I think that research should be carried out on new expression possibilities. For example, to be able to use several wheels and pedals simultaneously, or be able to program wheelstrokes on some pushbuttons, or have a spread of one second for one note, and a bar further for a quintuplet if needed.

EM: I am very interested in the VLI as well, especially since the release of the VL Visual Editor: right from the start, it’s possible to get interesting sonorities that can be refined in the synthesizers. Obviously, it is monophonic, and we would appreciate to have the same features in stereo… The new arpegiators are also very charming, but given their complexity, they are not very easy to use and their programming lacks user-friendliness.

Keyboard: Do computers have a great role in your music?
EM: Since we do not use multitrack mode, the Macintosh is the heart of our system. We build or songs with MIDI, with one machine per channel, multitimbral mode is banned!! This allows us to change a sound, a tempo, add or remove a bar, up until the very last minute. We sometimes use Pro Tools for editing.

Keyboard: What do you think about the new generation of musicians, passionately interested in electronic experimentations?
EM: I think that techno music has been the most creative phenomenon the last few years. Initially meant for non musicians, the DJ, techno definitely introduced a different approach… Today, attracted by the strong commercial capabilities of that music, producers and labels recovered part of it. But fortunately, there are still talented artists, like the Chemical Brothers who have no limits…

MS: Further more, this new wave has big influence: the musical ideas, sometimes a bit extreme, are re-used by all kind of musicians. We see singers and bands change their sounds, adding some saturation to their voices… showing their will to leave the beaten tracks of rock and international variety!

EM: This experimental aspect reminds me of the 60’s.

Keyboard: Can you picture yourselves doing an album without electronics?
EM: Maybe during a live concert. Last year, we had a lot of instruments on the stage. It should be possible. We then would need more musicians. As for studio work, it is not very easy, since Deep Forest has a great dependency on sampling, which is impossible to replace with the traditional technique of a singer.

MS: I think we have to insist on the fact that we are synth players, especially now that many artists want to go back to more acoustic stuff. Technology will offer us such wonderful instruments that, if we can be the first to use them, we will not miss the chance!

Keyboard: The universal language of your music helped you to cross borders. But, in concrete terms, how is your musical philosophy judged throughout the world?
EM: The best feedback was our tour. This experience, which involved twelve musicians and five singers, without adding sequencers or samples, compelled us to rework the orchestrations and find a way to adapt our music to the stage – it was out of the question to be only two musicians with sequencers and devices… It was a surprise for the public. People who came and saw us in the cabins said “You make us travel”. Travels are what we do the whole year, and these concerts were the perfect transcription of them.

MS: Before this live experience, people often talk about the relaxing music of Deep Forest. But as we started the tour, we quickly noticed that the public was moving and dancing! I think that people enjoy that alternation between rhythmic techno where dynamics are exploding, and some more acoustic and melodic moments that are more intimate.

EM: We had a lot of success everywhere. The craziest concert was definitely the one in Japan!

Keyboard: So you have been touring everywhere but not in France. Why?
EM: There was some skepticism in France about Deep Forest live, even from the label. We had to convince them. We also had to test the live performance, which we did in Australia. Given the crowd of people attending the show, the disc sales and the press reactions, we had to continue! We did not forget France, it is just a matter of timing… But for this new album, we will begin a tour this summer, in Australia, Japan, the USA, in Europe…and France.

Keyboard: You are interested in film Soundtracks. Why did you not follow in this direction?
EM: As ill luck would have it. Three years ago, a project with a German film maker failed because of “timing” problems on our side and budget problems on his. But recently, we met a famous French producer who would like to entrust us with the soundtrack of his new film, expected next fall. It will be a whole OST, not only some songs like we did for “Prêt à Porter”, “Strange Days” or “The Island of Doctor Moreau”.

Keyboard: Do you have any solo projects?
MS: I produced my first album with Wes Madiko. Released in February/March, it did not receive the expected success – a stranger who is not singing in french…- until TF1 (big TV channel in France) took part in the promotion. Every summer TF1 promotes some artists. Wes Madiko and Brazilian singer Carlinhos Brown were pre-selected and Wes was finally chosen. You know how it then went. Currently, I am working on a solo project with music genres I really enjoy: jazz, classical… This album will not make any concessions, with a lot of fantasy, a bit like what was done in the 70’s when there were no barriers.

EM: Currently, I am working on the new album of Abed Azrie, a Syrian singer with a beautiful deep voice. He would like to record in my studio. This acoustic project involves western musicians – a string quintet – and eastern artists – an Egyptian drummer, and an oud player… I have two or three more projects but only dealing with production.

Keyboard: For each album release, you make a generous gesture for a charity. Which one did you choose for “Comparsa”?
EM: It’s the “Sana de Madagascar”. The name of this association refers to Mama Sana, a Malagasy centenarian – unfortunately, she died during the recording of the album -, the so-called favorite musician of the Queen. Besides, you can hear her on many tracks of the album, more particularly in “Noonday Sun”. The Malagasy singers who introduced us to her, and who came to our studio for some choirs and to harmonize some phrases of Mama Sana, wanted to create an association to safeguard the Malagasy culture and heritage. We decided to help them by giving them a share of the sales of the new album.

thanks to C-Real for providing us a copy of this interview, to Florian Seka for the translation, and Pierre Jacquot for giving us a scan of the magazine cover.

GLOBAL MUSIC PULSE

The latest music news from around the planet FRANCE: What do the members of Deep Forest do when they are not recording for themselves or touring? They record and play for other musicians. Last year the French duo of Eric Mouquet and Michel Sanchez collaborated with Peter Gabriel, performed a set with Youssou N’Dour during the Francofolie festival in the city of La Rochelle, and remixed songs for Cesaria Evora–the highly praised singer from the African island of Cape Verde. Now, Deep Forest is taking it one step further. Keyboard player Sanchez has just composed and produced an album in his home studio for Cameroon artist Wes Madiko. The album will be released this fall on Sony Music Entertainment’s new Saint George imprint. Global Music Pulse had the chance to hear some tracks, and while it has some glimPaes of Deep Forest’s work, Sanchez has melded his style with the brilliant singing of Madiko, whose voice has some of N’Dour’s pitch and feel. The recording is in a free-style form, opening the door to improvisations. Madiko performs incantations in his native language, Bafou, with Sanchez building sounds around his voice. Madiko will be on the road this fall with Deep Forest in Australia, among other countries, doing the pygmy-tribal vocals that feature heavily in Deep Forest’s work. Deep Forest will then go back to the studio to cut a new album, tentatively set for release next April. Mouquet and Sanchez have been traveling in Latin America these past months, and their new work should bear inspiration from this region. ISRAEL: The revival of traditional Arabic and Turkish music in recent years by a new generation of educated musicians has attracted wide attention throughout the Arab world. Performances of this almost forgotten musical heritage require highly sophisticated techniques performed by individual virtuosos. An album titled “Oriental Art Music” by the Ziryab Trio, released in Israel on Nada Productions, provides an opportunity to indulge in the richness of this classical Eastern music. The trio, led by oud (Arabic lute) player Taiseer Ilias, was founded to give a deeper expression to oriental classical music and is the most recent to emerge and capture the imagination in this field. The other members of the trio are Naseen Dakwar on violin and Zohar Fresco on rig (tambourine), with the addition of Ema Nuel Mann on bass and Avraham Salman playing ganoun (Arabic zither) on some tracks. The live set features ensemble compositions by 19th- and 20th-century composers such as renowned Turkish composer Jamil Bey Tanburi (1871-1916) and the Egyptian Muhammad Abdelwahab (1902-1991). Genres like the samai–a Turkish rhythmic structure identical to the Western classical rondo in its format–and the classical Turkish longa seem to concentrate Ilias’ vitality and physical strength. Another form of music found on the set is taqsim–a nonmetric instrumental improvisation. Despite the technical disadvantages of live recording, the trio’s performance is expressive and startling. U.K.: Yunchen Lhamo was given her name by a Buddhist holy man. It means “goddess of melody and song.” She was born and raised in Tibet, and her spirituality and her voice were nurtured by her mother, grandmother, and aunt. She left her spiritual home seven years ago on a journey that has seen her perform her interpretations of Tibetan hymns for the United Nations and religious and world leaders, and she has attracted praise from a wide range of artists, including Crowded House’s Tim Finn, who has written a song for her. The Australian Record Industry Assn. honored her set “Tibetan Prayer” as 1995’s best world music album. Her first U.K. release, “Tibet Tibet” on RealWorld/Virgin, is a collection of Buddhist devotional and celebration songs, prayers, and chants delivered with haunting grace over a minimum of accompaniment, with the exception of the final song, “Gi Pai Pa Yul Chola,” which uses a full orchestra. “Since I arrived in the West, I have seen so many people searching to understand the spirituality that exists within them,” Lhamo says. “People need to find this within themselves, to tap into it whatever way they can, explore it, understand it, and make it strong. I hope in some way people will find this album inspirational in that sense.” She recently gave acclaimed performances at the world music festival WOMAD in Reading, England, and at the Tibetan Day celebrations at London’s Alexander Palace, which was attended by Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. AUSTRALIA: It is not surprising that the Divinyls aroused the interest of Charley Drayton, a member of Keith Richards’ X-Pensive Winos and one-time contender for Bill Wyman’s spot in the Rolling Stones. Their guitar pop has a similar irresistible swagger. Drayton initially collaborated on tracks for movie projects that included “Sleepless In Seattle” and “Super Mario Brothers” before producing the bulk of the Divinyls’ new CD, “Underworld” (BMG). The multi-instrumentalist has also joined the Divinyls on current Australian dates. “Underworld” took four years to emerge, the delay due in part to their exit from Virgin and a protracted dispute last year between BMG and the band’s manager at the time. “This is a hard business to be in,” says singer Chrissie Amphlett, whose appearances onstage in a schoolgirl tunic date back to the early ’80s, when she formed the act with guitarist Mark McEntee. “The trick is to make sure that all these feelings are directed into the music. As I grow older, I deal with my anger a lot better.” Dates are planned in the U.S. and Europe, where the Divinyls have toured since 1983 and where a deal is being brokered for “Underworld.” By EMMANUEL LEGRAND, MUHAMMAD HIJAZI, JON CROUCH AND CHRISTIE ELIEZER

EDITED BY JOHN CROUCH

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Source: Billboard, 9/7/96, Vol. 108 Issue 36, p69, 1/2p, 2bw.
Item Number: 9610227550
SOUNDS OF DEEP FOREST COMING TO S‘POREBYL INE: By Rebecca LimBODY:

THEY were more concerned with the music. So much so that they thought of a name for themselves only when their debut album was to be released.
They took the title of one of the songs on the self-titled album and became known as Deep Forest.
Since then, the duo has become known for its blend of ambient dance and culturally-specific sounds -the music of the rainforest pygmies of Zaire and the Central African Republic in its first album in 1993, and Eastern European in last year’s follow-up, Boheme.
The latter is perhaps best known for Marta’s Song, which made it to the mainstream air waves more often than Sweet Lullaby, the single from the duo’s first album.
The French combination of keyboardists Eric Mouquet and Michel Sanchez has also earned a Grammy nomination for Best World Music and collaborated with the guru of world music Peter Gabriel, on While The Earth Sleeps, for the soundtrack of Kathryn Bigelow’s futuristic thriller Strange Days.
Boheme has just been re-released in Singapore with that song as a bonus track. The Strange Days soundtrack has been banned here.
And fans here might just be able to catch Deep Forest in a concert here at the end of this year if all goes well, Sanchez, 38, told Life! in a telephone interview from France.
The details are still being discussed, but the duo is keen to perform here when it begins its Asian tour in November, he said in English laden heavily with his French accent.
“For the show, we want to avoid using computers and sequencers. We want to play live like a band.”
So the two men have lined up a group complete with a drummer, a bassist and a third keyboardist, three lead singers and two backup vocalists to fill out their act.
They have written “three or four” new songs to play in the show, along with pieces from their two albums.

A new album has been planned for the first half of next year. This time, Sanchez said, the focus will not be on any particular country.

“It is a surprise,” he said, apologising repeatedly for his “bad English”.

“We want to work around different countries in the world and try to find a common point,” he added.

The common point between him and friend-cum-musical partner Mouquet is the desire to make music. They are not concerned about the commercial aspects of making records, although Deep Forest, the album, has sold more than two million copies worldwide.

Sanchez had known Mouquet, 35, for more than seven years, working in the studios in France, before they decided to join forces to make an album.

While Mouquet had “learnt music by himself”, Sanchez was trained classically in the accordion, piano and classical organ. He attended the Conservatory of Paris for three years before “a very big lack of money” forced him to leave and take on “a lot of different jobs in music”.

That was in the past and now, he sees it all as a blessing in disguise.

For the future, he added, he and Mouquet would like to collaborate with more artistes from different countries, “and to avoid so much sampling”.

“It is important for us because we support really traditional music. We don’t use recipes to make easy money.”

Eric Mouquet (left) and Michel Sanchez.

LOAD-DATE: June 5, 1996

A Small World After All. But Is That Good?By Jon Pareles

WHEN DEEP FOREST’S “BOHEME” won this year’s Grammy Award for world music, the purist in me groaned. With typical reflexes, the Grammy voters had chosen an album made in the exotic reaches of France, under the primitive conditions of a digital recording studio and steeped in the rarely noticed traditions of disco, house music and European rock. As the members of Deep Forest wrote in liner notes, “native melodies” were simply “raw material, an opportunity to mix, cross and blend.” If this was world music, it was from a virtual world, where geography is warped by the click of a mouse. Call it small-world music.During the 1990’s, small-world music has been humming in more places: at clubs, in television commercials with glimmers of Andean panpipes and Balinese gamelans and, as proliferating releases suggest, in homes. Small-world music has spawned specialty labels, including the determinedly eclectic Quango (distributed through Island), which has concentrated on collections, and Sub Meta (distributed through Caroline), the latest imprint of the category-busting producer Bill Laswell. Labels that generally release more ethnographic world music, like Real World, have been putting out electronics-laced hybrids; so have jazz labels.Where it was once noteworthy when a musician like Youssou N’Dour, from Senegal, would sing alongside Peter Gabriel or Paul Simon, it’s less of a novelty now when Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the master of Pakistan’s devotional qawwali music, teams up with Eddie Vedder on the “Dead Man Walking” soundtrack or makes an album with the English electronic musician Michael Brook. Marta Sebestyen’s voice, which provides much of the “raw material” of Deep Forest’s “Boheme,” also appears on Towering Inferno’s “Kaddish,” an album about the Holocaust. Usually, Ms. Sebestyen records traditional music from her native Hungary, but on her new album, “Kismet,” she also sings Irish, Greek and Indian songs.I’m a diehard fan of world music from specific places and times, music that grew out of local traditions and survived while sustaining its heritage. Part of my attachment is probably sentimental: an idealization of the exotic and primitive and rare, and a willingness to ignore the paradoxes of listening to a jungle-healing ritual, on a CD, to escape the pace and commercialism of music-as-usual.Big-world music provides reassuring visions of community: places where music is produced for local occasions and where the languages in the songs, verbal and musical, are widely shared, even if I don’t know them. For musicians, world music shows endless ways to construct melodies and rhythms, scales and structures, and it continually redefines virtuosity.

Once a sound is recorded, it’s abstracted from its original time and space, and that makes it available for any new context that can sneak past copyright lawyers. It’s no longer a wedding song or an age-old lament; it’s just another chunk of information. The first rock musicians to turn that knowledge into an album were probably Brian Eno and David Byrne on “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” in 1981; they surrounded Lebanese, Algerian and Egyptian singers with new rhythm tracks. Fifteen years later, their experiment is the foundation of a genre. Snippets of Arabic and Tibetan chant, of the vocal polyphony of Corsicans or Central African pygmies and of the drums of Brazilian carnival bands or Moroccan healers can all be heard floating across the electronic soundscapes of recent releases.

I was suspicious of “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” w