Deep Forest - Sound Reporters as
Interpreters of the Music of other Cultures

The next forest lies about 20 kilometers away, instead of a multicultural pot, there awaits the most farmerlike french wasteland, and also no band, instead only two totally crazy sound dabblers with a travelling-fever. Deep forest - a fraud? The old farmer's house is full of souvenirs and presents from all the corners of the earth. The old stable is now a modern and generously equiped studio, in which mostly one instrument plays a dominant roll: The keyboard.

Michel Sanchez, who has mastered most key instruments, in 1991 had the idea for this Worldbeat-project. With the keyboard player Eric Mouquet, Michel quickly found a congenial partner with the same ideas. They see themselves since then as sound reporters, always travelling in the duty of their music. 1993 a multicultural lullaby conquered the globe in no time, "Sweet Lullaby" made sure that the album "World Mix " reached platin, gold or double-platin in both USA, France, Great Britin, Australia and many other countries. The second album "Bohéme" from 1995 included a collaboration with Peter Gabriel, on the song "While The Earth Sleeps", and at the same time was the titlesong of the soundtrack for the film "Strange Days". Futher film melodies followed, to " Pret-a-Porter" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau". To find out which motives where behind their third Album, "III Comparsa", Ralph Buchblender drove to the north of france and visited Eric and Michel in their studio.
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?: Your last trip brought you to Madagascar, Cuba, Mexico and Central America. Do you always travel as " Sound-Repoters" or is there also a private traveller Michel and Eric?

Michel: Theoretically yes, practically no. Even when I'm lying lazely at the beach, the splashing of the waves can inspire me to a song. But actually we always only travel as private vacationers. Our main interest by the planing of a trip is the weather (laughs). No, of course we interest ourselves in the culture and the people. Exactly as the tourist, who admires the Pyramids in Egypt, we are interested in all the cultural things of that country. Thats why we also almost never drive twice to the same place, because we want to see as much as possible of the earth.

Eric: First when we arrive at home, we start to build our memories into music. We seldomly have the possibility to immediatly record something usable for later. Mostly we only make cotacts and then invite the musicians into our studio.

?: During one of your sessions with some Madagascaran musicians, you got a message concerning the death of the hundred year old Mama Sana, who's singing you recorded in both songs "Noonday Sun" and "Green and Blue". Then you recorded a traditional prayer in honor of the admired, Madagascaran Mama Sana, that can be heard at the beginning of "Noonday Sun". What did she mean to you?

Eric: Sadly we never met her in person, instead only saw pictures of her. Never the less we were deeply touched by her death alone through the stories of the Madagascaran musicians that we had with us and who had close friendships with Mama Sana. She impressed us a lot, as we heard the recordings, we coudn't believe that that was a hundred year old who was singing. A friend of ours had made the recordings since we were in America at the time. The sessions with the Madagascarans was at the beginning of our new album, the prayer was the expression of respect towards a big personality.

?: Next to the Impressions from your trip to Madagaskar, your Cuba visit is especially noticable on your new CD. Alone the spanish title "Comparsa" (partner) shows that the trip must have impressed you a lot.

Michel: This trip was also planed as a pure vacaction visit. We didn't specially plan to fly to Cuba to let our expressions flow into our next album. That came later as we found out how many resemblances there are between Madagascaran an Cuban music. That's why we made a plan to mix Cuban and African music and engaged the Cuban musician Jorge Reyes. He plays almost each form of the flute and percussion, also sings himself, and we also made a contact with Maria Sabina, who sings in " Tres Marias". The contact was made quickly, because Jorge lives in Paris and releases his songs at Saint George (record company), the same label as us. The partnership was also the reason for the title of the album "Comparsa", partner.

?: On "Comparsa" there is next to the already named guest musicians also Joe Zawinul, Ex-Weather Report. After the partnership with Peter Gabriel once again an international collaboration by Deep Forest. How did that happen?

Eric: Weather Report had always made a great impression on me. I already as a teenager liked the idea of mixing traditional music with othe influences, as Weather Report had done especially by " Black Market". I saw Joe as a very innovative musician and I liked the way he created his own style. The way he plays still today is a riddle to me. His creativity is as always unbroken,as that too massively impresses me. So it was a great honor for me and Michel that we could win him for " Comparsa".

Michel: As we were in New York together in the studio he found a synthesizer that he didn't know yet. He immediately turned into a child that had gotten a new toy. He had to try everything and always shouted when he found something out: "Look, I can do this and look here, I can do this too". As I saw Joe the first time about twenty years ago I would have never dreamed that we would once talk together about synthesizers. The work together with him was a undescribable experience, he's a true musical genius. To call the song with Joe "Deep Weather", wasn't too original, but it shows our pride, having connected Deep Forest with Weather Report.

?: You develop the musical achievements from your trips, recorded here or there, with your own musical influences. Both of the earlier ones were formed by drifting rythyms, as also used by Sacred Spirit or Enigma. "Comparsa" now also uses Drum'n'Bass- and modern dance-rythyms. Is that a "(Anbiederung)" towards the modern sounds?

Michel: No, the parts with the styles you mentioned are too small for that. But the way we make our music is never far away from the way of making modern dance- and tecnomusic. We mix the most different kinds of samples with our music into one song. On our first album we also made some remixes from " Sweet Lullaby" and also sold them. We would also let other musicians do that since we like the idea that someone takes our music and lets his own musical ideas flow in, be it Techno, HipHop or even Death Metal. This is a basic idea from World-Music, not only the mixture of different music-cultures, but also the mixture of differnt aspects there of.

Eric: What we don't like is the idea of just putting in a Tecno-Beat to stamp a Hit-Single out. That doesn't have anything to do with creative music-culture. Only, Deep Forest has to evolve exactly as other bands too. We could also just reproduce " Sweet Lullaby" ten times, that would be artwise worth nothing, but maybe commercialy more sucessful. But that's not what counts by us. We see ourselves as
interpreters for the music of other cultures and try to, in our way, pass it on. That's how one shall get an impression from the Madagascaran and the Cuban music.

Ralph Buchbender


(translation by Tycho Riday done for Deep In The Jungle)