Deep Forest

French electronic duo Deep Forest emerged in 1992 when musicians Eric Mouquet and Michel Sanchez began merging indigenous vocal traditions from distant cultures with their own atmospheric electronic productions. Their debut album arrived the following year and quickly gained international attention through the single “Sweet Lullaby,” which paired the duo’s original synthesizer textures with a traditional lullaby recorded in the Solomon Islands. Building on that multi-platinum success, the pair issued a string of albums across the remainder of the 1990s that continued to blend global field recordings with laid-back dance rhythms, while also supplying original music for several film soundtracks in the early 2000s. After the founding members parted ways in 2005, Mouquet retained the Deep Forest name and periodically concentrated on the music of particular regions for subsequent projects. The sixth studio album released under the moniker, Evo Devo, appeared in 2016 and took the biological concept of evolutionary development as its thematic foundation.

Mouquet and Sanchez had first been introduced to the possibilities of world-music sampling after Sanchez returned from an extended stay in Africa carrying field recordings that he and Mouquet then integrated into their productions with the assistance of engineer Dan Lacksman. The resulting self-titled debut reached listeners worldwide on the strength of “Sweet Lullaby.” For the follow-up, Boheme, the duo expanded its geographic scope to include Mongolia, India, and Hungary, enlisting Hungarian singer Márta Sebestyén for several tracks; the album surfaced in 1995. Two further studio efforts, Comparsa and the concert recording Live in Japan, appeared in 1998 and 1999 respectively. In 2000 the pair composed the score Pacifique for the French film Le Prince du Pacifique, and in 2002 they returned with the studio album Music.Detected_. A series of retrospective compilations followed, along with another soundtrack, this time for the Japanese feature Kusa No Ran, issued in 2004.

When Sanchez departed in 2005 to pursue solo work, Mouquet carried on alone, occasionally teaming with outside artists such as Josh Groban and jazz pioneer Joe Zawinul. Region-specific collaborations yielded the 2008 album Deep Brasil, recorded with Brazilian musician Flávio Dell’Isola; Deep Africa, completed in 2013 with a roster of African performers; and 2014’s Deep India, which featured santoor player Rahul Sharma. In 2018 Mouquet joined forces with worldbeat artist Gaudi for the album Epic Circuits.