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A Glimpse Into The Universe of 4 Hero and Reinforced Records.
4 Hero's music sounds like it was conceived on another planet. The London-based duo of Dego McFarlane and Mark Mac have always been just a few steps ahead of the game. With their forward-thinking approaches to previously unattempted fusions of music, this pair have etched themselves a revered place in the drum 'n' bass history books. Their story extends back into the late eighties where the early sounds of hardcore were just beginning to take form. Jungle didn't exist and the genre known as drum 'n' bass had yet to be coined. At that primordial moment, the horizons of this new electronic medium were boundless.
4 Hero began with four members. Dego first connected with Mark and his electronic engineering school mates, Ian Bardouille and Gus Lawrence, on the Camden-based pirate radio station Strong Island FM. What brought them all together was a mutual love of hip hop and jazz fusion. Before long it became apparent they needed an outlet for the music they had been producing collectively. The whole bureaucracy of getting with a record label was not a realistic option for them. The extent that these four immersed themselves in their art required complete autonomy. It was then that the seminal jungle/techno/hip hop/experimental label, Reinforced Records, was born. It went on to become a legendary source of electronic music with Gus and Ian focusing more on the business aspects of the label while Mark and Dego continued producing under the name 4 Hero as well as other pseudonyms such as Tom & Jerry, Nu Era, Jacob's Optical Stairway, Manix (Mark) and Tek 9 (Dego).
4 Hero and the Reinforced umbrella continued to enlighten the burgeoning jungle underground with a variety of artistic and technological innovations throughout the nineties. But it was their work in '94 on the ground breaking LP Parallel Universe that altered the face of jungle forever. This triumph merged free-form electronic jazz with glittering snares and stuttering breaks in a way that took drum 'n' bass into outer space. Both music consumers and peers alike were astonished by this absurdly futuristic concept album. Full-lengths weren't really being done in jungle at that time. What's more, in doing so they perfected the pivotal process of time stretching (a technique which allows samples to be stretched and mutated to fit any rhythm without losing their original pitch, i.e. no more sped up helium vocals). By this point no one dared doubt the supreme quality 4 Hero and Reinforced were capable of.
In the constant quest to alter musical conceptions, their work on 1995's truly unique fusion album Jacob's Optical Stairway on R&S combined techno, house, jazz and drum 'n' bass into an engaging whole that to this day remains a timeless classic and source of inspiration. In 1998, 4 Hero sought once again to change the way people thought of drum 'n' bass. The much anticipated Two Pages was released on Talkin' Loud that summer. Again, Mark and Dego had employed a basis of d 'n' b, but that was just a platform to launch their extensive artistic visions. This majestic conception crosses over into the realms of jazz and soul with ample amounts of full vocal tracks and wall to wall live instrumentation on 'page' one. The second 'page' departs on a deep journey into sublime futuristic jungle abstractions. The resulting Two Pages is a culmination of everything Reinforced had been working towards for the past decade.
Never content with one musical approach, 4 Hero has always attempted to incorporate the best qualities of acoustic instruments and jazz experimentation with today's high-powered music making machines. Serious music consumers are urged to search out any of the titles and labels mentioned here. 4 Hero does not settle for less than complete departures from what is taken to be understood about their music. The selections they've produced are quite possibly some of the more beautiful tones you'll experience this millennium. The depth to which 4 Hero and Reinforced have influenced the lifeline and progression of jungle/drum 'n' bass is truly unequaled. May they continue looking forward while exploding all boundaries...we'll try and catch up!