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Section: Artists & Music

MUSIC

550 To Go Beyond Main Promo Sources

New York--For a good portion of 1994, it seemed impossible to walk 100 yards without hearing the eerily captivating, Afro-ambient sounds of Deep Forest's "Sweet Lullaby"--a state of affairs that Sony's 550 Music hopes to duplicate when "Boheme," the second album to bear the Deep Forest name, is released April 25.

"The success we realized with Deep Forest the first time around capitalized on multiple impressions," says John Doelp, 550 executive VP. "Radio and club play are important, but the penetration we're looking for goes beyond that. We're looking to get [its] music into as many applications as possible."

Those applications, according to 550 VP of promotion Hilary Schaev, range from the expected (Deep Forest has done bumpers for the Discovery Channel and appears on the soundtrack of "Ready To Wear") to the offbeat (its music can be heard in a newly completed Body Shop "documercial").

"Done tastefully, exposure through vehicles like commercials can translate into sales," Schaev says. "We worked out a deal with Sony that featured 'Sweet Lullaby' on a Trinitron commercial, with a chyron identifying it. That was on TV every 10 minutes, which certainly didn't hurt."

Nearly three years after its initial international release, the self-titled set that spawned "Sweet Lullaby" has sold nearly 1 million copies worldwide, with a gold certification in the U.S. and a platinum award in Australia (for 70,000 units sold). "Sweet Lullaby" was a hit on both Billboard's Hot Dance Music Club Play and Modern Rock Tracks charts. (Billboard, Feb. 19, 1994).

At Tower Records in New York, the act's title was one of the store's best sellers. "It was on our top 25 for quite a long time, almost a year," says Tower administrative assistant Jack Pires. As was the case with the last album, "Boheme" will be placed in the pop/rock section, rather than in world music. "It seems like a good place to put it, and it sells well there," says Pires. "Even though it's considered world music, it has more than just that feel to it."

France-based composers Erik Mouquet and Michel Sanchez, who jointly create the music that appears under the Deep Forest imprimatur, claim to have had no lofty commercial goals for the first album. "It was purely an accident," says Sanchez, speaking through an interpreter. "I have been interested in African music since I was a student [at the Conservatory of Paris], but I never worked with it until Erik and I began experimenting. It didn't seem like something accessible, it was just a labor of love."

Working with archival samples of Central African singers (the "Sweet Lullaby" voices came from a pygmy lullaby), the duo forged a sound that was at once viscerally familiar and strikingly novel. While Sanchez readily admits the hybrid sound isn't strictly authentic, he insists he and Mouquet have avoided exploitation of their source material.

"The first priority was always to respect the voice, the emotion," he says. "We started out doing the music as soft as possible so it wouldn't sound like a gadget. We wanted the emotion to come through in the voices, and I think that's what people relate to."

On "Boheme," the duo has expanded its scope to include not only African sounds, but the traditional music of Eastern Europe--in evidence on the initial single," "Marta's Song," which features vocals by Rykodisc artist Marta Sebasteynne. The single will ship to radio in about a month, with several remixes being readied for club play.

"They weren't interested in just delivering more of the same music as on the first album," says Doelp. "And I think that shows the breadth of their vision for Deep Forest. The beauty of their art is the ability to mesh these diverse things to create a unique fingerprint."

With material as varied as the gallic "Deep Folk Song" and the West African tinged "Freedom Cry," Sanchez and Mouquet have done so with remarkable fluidity. Sanchez notes that the cross-cultural pollination isn't as difficult to effect as it might seem.

"There are many similarities between the musics of cultures one thinks of as very different," he says. "Some of the pygmies' singing is similar to Swiss yodeling; there is throat singing in [Belarus]."

Much of Deep Forest's initial success emanated from the much-lauded "Sweet Lullaby" video lensed by director Tarsem. That clip was actually the second video shot for the song and was issued shortly after the project moved from Epic to 550 in August 1993.

"That video was instrumental in helping us take Deep Forest to gold from its initial base, which I'd put at around 180,000," says David Massey, Epic VP of A&R, who continues to work the project. "So obviously, we intend to concentrate our efforts on making another striking video." Deep Forest is reviewing treatments and will select a director shortly.

Massey also notes that the presence of vocalist Sebasteynne (who appears on three songs on "Boheme") opens up an avenue previously unavailable to Deep Forest--that of live performance.

"We're still in the preliminary stages as far as that goes," he says. "But we're looking at some form of performance, whether it's conceptual touring or television. We're involving Marta as much as we can, because she has such a striking presence."

Sanchez is enthusiastic about the prospect of performing Deep Forest's music for an audience. He's reluctant, however, to claim a share of the attendant spotlight for himself.

"The sound is what is important here, not the personalities involved," he says. "I'm certainly not interested in being a pop star that's a very fragile thing. Being a composer is enduring."

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): DEEP FOREST: Michel Sanchez and Erik Mouquet.

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By DAVID SPRAGUE

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Source: Billboard, 3/18/95, Vol. 107 Issue 11, p14, 2p, 1bw. 
Item Number: 9503242768