Made in Japan

We never expected a live album from Deep Forest, the two French keyboardists (Eric Monquet and Michel Sanchez) whose stylishly peculiar music (ambient meets dance meets Pygmy vocalese) is a laboratory-like concoction of clever sampling, synthesizers, and studio savvy. Sanchez, in fact, confesses to stage fright. Yet here we find the two lads on a Tokyo stage in 1998, accompanied by four musicians and three singers, breathing life — at times, even fire — into their digitally spliced global village. It's a different sound for the group, and mostly an invigorating one. The real-time human element permeating Made in Japan infuses DF's carefully crafted atmospheres with an energizing vitality and sense of spontaneity. Any absence of studio sophistication in Deep Forest's live sound is compensated for by the music's celebratory mood and the concert's interactive, transcultural, communal environment. This serves to reinforce an ongoing subtext in Deep Forest's aesthetic--the desire to draw a musical thread through the mystical pursuits of far-flung cultures. Highlights: the beguiling grooves of "Bohemian Ballet," the mysterious propulsion of "Cafe Europa," and the groove-fueled choir that drives "Forest Power." — Terry Wood