Deep Forest
| Deep Forest | |
|---|---|
| Origin | France |
| Genres | Electronic, new-age, ambient, world, ethnic electronica |
| Years active | 1992–present |
| Website |
Michel Sanchez Eric Mouquet |
| Members | Eric Mouquet (1992–present) |
| Past members | Michel Sanchez (1992–2005) |
Deep Forest is a musical group originally consisting of two French musicians, Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet. They compose a style of world music, sometimes called ethnic electronica, mixing ethnic with electronic sounds and dance beats or chillout beats. Their sound has been described as an "ethno-introspective ambient world music." They were nominated for a Grammy Award in 1994 for Best World Music Album, and in 1995 they won the Award for the album Boheme. The group also became World Music Awards Winner - French group with the highest 1995 world sales. Their albums have sold over 10 million copies. Michel Sanchez started his own career as singer on 2005 and Eric Mouquet continued working under "Deep Forest".
Michel Sanchez came up with the idea of mixing the native Baka pygmy spoken word with modern music after hearing on-site recordings of these tribes conversing. Along with Eric Mouquet they created the project Deep Forest. Their first self-titled album (nominated for a Grammy) was released in 1992, with "Sweet Lullaby" being the smash single which would put Deep Forest on the musical map (UK Top 10 hit). The song "Sweet Lullaby" is adapted from a traditional song from the Solomon Islands. The album Deep Forest was dance-driven and the samples were heavily digitised and edited. It was re-released as a limited edition in 1994 under the name World Mix.
For their second album Boheme, Eric and Michel left behind the sounds of the forest and ventured into Eastern Europe bringing tender, lonesome Hungarian and Gypsy chants with upbeat, yet sad, music. Due to this shift, Dan Lacksman (from Telex, producer and sound-engineer of the first album) decided to go his separate way and continued working on other projects like Pangea. The chants were no longer brief, instead extended phrases had been sampled from Hungarian, and Russian. Hungarian singer Márta Sebestyén and Kate Petrova performed on this album. The duo also performed and produced the remixes for the Youssou N'Dour single "Undecided" in 1994, with guest vocals by Neneh Cherry (who featured on n'Dour's break-through single "Seven Seconds"). That same year Deep Forest made remixes for Jon Anderson's "Deseo", Apollo 440's "Liquid Cool" and Cesária Évora's "My Fatigue is Endless". In 1996 Deep Forest collaborated with Peter Gabriel on the song "While the Earth Sleeps" which was written for the film Strange Days.
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