Rolling Stone (11/12/98, p.118) - "...the duo leavens jungle's usually claustrophobic textures with acoustic sounds--human voice, jazzy bass, a live string quartet--and actual songs....an album as wide-ranging and melodically rich as Stevie Wonder's SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE..."
Vibe (11/98, p.166) - "...The double-CD set is divided into two distinct sections, or pages....Dego and Mark know how to splice and dice their way into new rhythmic terrain..."
4 Hero: Dego, Mark.
Additional personnel includes: Ursula Rucker.
Contains 19 tracks.
Drum-and-bass has come a long way since its underground birth in the early '90s. It has moved from its white label origins into the realm of downright respectability and mass acceptance, is used as advertising fodder, and is even sometimes dislocated from its purist electronic roots. 4 Hero, like Roni Size, Goldie, and Impulse before them, seek to integrate drum-and-bass with acoustic instrumentation, looking for a way to boldly paint the genre as the music of the future.
Epic in scope, TWO PAGES is a sprawling two-disc set that bounces between lush life electronica, with the supple strings and sampled orchestras that abound throughout Disc One, and the galvanized-steel rhythmic tours de force of Disc Two. It's an experiment that pays dividends for the listener--note the alien trajectories of "We Who Are Not as Others," and "Humans," or dance through the majesty of the Pleiades on dreamy sonic confections such as "Wishful Thinking," or "Spirits in Transit," which effortlessly links '60s CTI jazzmen such as Deodato and Stanley Clarke to contemporary downtempo starshine.
Drum-and-bass has come a long way since its underground birth in the early '90s. It has moved from its white label origins into the realm of downright respectability and mass acceptance, is used as advertising fodder, and is even sometimes dislocated from its purist electronic roots. 4 Hero, like Roni Size, Goldie, and Impulse before them, seek to integrate drum-and-bass with acoustic instrumentation, looking for a way to boldly paint the genre as the music of the future.
Epic in scope, TWO PAGES is a sprawling two-disc set that bounces between lush life electronica, with the supple strings and sampled orchestras that abound throughout Disc One, and the galvanised-steel rhythmic tours de force of Disc Two. It's an experiment that pays dividends for the listener--note the alien trajectories of "We Who Are Not as Others", and "Humans", or dance through the majesty of the Pleiades on dreamy sonic confections such as "Wishful Thinking", or "Spirits in Transit", which effortlessly links '60s CTI jazzmen such as Deodato and Stanley Clarke to contemporary downtempo starshine.