artist: Deep Forest country of origin: France style(s): Ethno ambient, ambient breaks, ambient dance essential releases: Deep Forest (1992, Sony) Boheme (1995, Sony)

A close (and superior) musical cousin of equally popular Enigma, Deep Forest pairs French dance producers Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet. While Enigma never did manage to make a consistently great album in its heyday, Deep Forest managed the feat twice. The pop-friendly melodies and solid musical foundations have seen both albums age quite gracefully.

The duo's debut album Deep Forest was a massive mainstream hit, emerging during the first wave of ambient dance music in the early 90's. Sanchez had traveled the world collecting ethnic records and came up with the simple but effective idea of sampling some tribal singing and blending it with electronic beats. The massive hit single “Sweet Lullaby” is masterful, with its shy pygmy vocals carried on a slow, hypnotic drum loop and a gorgeous progression of synth chords. It's genuinely touching and quite unforgettable. Elsewhere, tracks like “Deep Forest” and “Hunting” up the tempo with funkier, faster beats and some of the processed vocal samples take on an almost comic quality.

Boheme is an equally accomplished follow-up and sees them moving beyond the forests of Africa to the world of East European folk music. Again it’s an engaging mix of old and new, traditional songs and vocal samples fused with electronic beats and rich ambient textures. No doubt in response to the accusations of ethnic plagiarism that dogged them over their first album, the duo this time scrupulously document their sampled sources.

After Boheme the group virtually disappeared from view. Subsequent albums into the new century such as Music Detected (2002) struggled to match the inspired fusion of their early work.

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