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Deep Forest On An Invisible Island

By Honza Dedek

Today, they belong among the most famous world music bands. Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet, a French duet, who call themselves DEEP FOREST. Their newest album Pacifique is a soundtrack for the film by Thierry Lhermitt, but, as Michel Sanchez states, it's world music again - this time from the Pacific islands region.

Q: What is the film Le Prince du Pacifique about?
A: That's a very difficult question, with regards to my English. It tells a story of a Nordic legend and an island, which is invisible, because it is inhabited by gods. But there are always people who are trying to find a place exactly like this, and it's the same in this case, too.

Q: The music for the film Le Prince du Pacifique is not your first collaboration with the film. You have already made soundtrack for the films Pret-a-porter by Robert Altman, for John Frankenheimer's The Island of Doctor Moreau and for the film Strange Days by Kathryn Bigelow. Is it possible to compare these films, from the musical point of view?
A: It's all about the personal contacts with the directors, of course; with some we fit better, with some worse. For instance, the collaboration with Kathryn Bigelow wasn't really great, it took place under a lot of stress, all the time, Kathryn wasn't sure whether our music was good or bad, and, at the end, she came up with a strange idea that she would actually like music in the vein of Portishead, and she asked us if we couldn't compose something in their style. On the other hand, the collaboration with Thierry Lhermitt was outstanding, because he likes the music of Deep Forest very much, and he gave us carte blanche for composing the soundtrack. And he was really satisfied with the result.

Q: When working on the music for Strange Days, you worked together with Peter Gabriel. You both are intensely interested in world music, but you approach it from completely different angles. What was the collaboration like?
A: That's, of course, an unforgettable experience, at least for me personally, as I've always deeply respected Peter Gabriel. It was an encounter with an idol. I was extremely nervous because I thought he either wouldn't know the music of Deep Forest at all and would look down upon as as some funny beginners, who he has to waste his talents with, or, in the better case, he would know our music, but wouldn't like it at all. At the end it turned out that he knew all our records and that he liked them a lot. At least that's what he was saying.

Q: In May, your new album should be released. What region will you turn to this time to find your inspiration?
A: Before we started composing music for Le Prince du Pacifique, we visited India and Japan, where we discovered a lot of traditional music and met a number of marvelous singers. Now we spend all our time in the studio, listening to what we brought home, and think of the rhythmic accompaniment.

Q: What's the criterion according to which you choose the region where you go to collect the material for your recordings?
A: We, of course, listen to a lot of records with traditional music, so we have a good overview of the folk music of great part of the world. And based on this, we decide which region to visit. We are interested in regions with specific culture, where we then try to spend some time.

Q: And do you know some Czech folk music?
A: Actually, we don't, we only know your classical composers. Dvorak, Smetana and Tschaikowski*.

Honza Dedek

*As a matter of fact, Tschaikowski isn't Czech, but Russian. (From the Czech cultural weekly magazine Reflex, 4/2001, p.55 translated for Deep In The Jungle by Jan Flaska)