4 Hero: Classic or classic?

Plus, anybody who knows me must certainly be curious to know what unearthly power would actually make me check out an Ursula Rucker album, which I did but didn't like nearly as much as "Loveless"

Their last record has some great moments, but it isn't consistently bliss.

Their last album is shite, the worst tendencies of Two Pages rolled into one boring jazz fart. It's been downhill from Jacob's Optical Stairway on really, which had the right balance between "jazz" and..ahem...breakbeat science. So classic but somebody has to take away their recording budget and force them back to that shitty London bedroom studio.

mr.

kirk's

nightmare.

and "journey from the light" isn't half rated highly as it should be. a string arangement as prissily beautiful as the aphex twin's girl/boy song with mad mashed up jungle to boot, two or three years before the fact. that's bliss.

I've been listening heaps to their first album "In Rough Territory", which is pretty fantastic - like the best bits of early Warp, Belgium, very heavily hip hop-influenced 'ardkore and a smattering of house mashed up together... and it was released in '91, ie. very forward looking.

Unlike Omar I enjoy the latest album more than 'Jacob's Optical Stairway', which has a strange dearth of, um, tunes (fine for rougher hardcore, ragga, techstep etc. jungle but really weird for smoother jazzy stuff). Whereas their newer stuff I like in spite of myself - Ursula and Jill etc. are hardly the sort of people I'd go for usually but somehow it all works quite well at least 2/3 of the time, if not more.

i dont know about the jazzstep onwards stuff, but i love the Manix releases. the earlier releases (head in the clouds etc) seemed so cheesily euphoric (they were abstainers themselves weren't they?), and, i thought, northern (essex, london and the south was more break oriented, while manchester, leeds and the north was more piano/etune focused in 91).

the later manix releases (cf. the tek9 rmx of alright wid me, heading to the light) sounded drugged and woozy, real heavy on the murky vibe, this time sound proper like a london thing, no way this gonna work up north. this postrave-prejungle seam yields some great london tunes, and proves it wasn't all either 'darkness' or the beginnings of happy hardcore in 93.

Wha? The only reason 4 Hero have lasted longer than the rest of their "Intelligent" peers (die Danny Bukem, die!)is precisely because they moved even further away from their d-core "roots" and swanned off into some wan Kirk Degiorgio fusion hell. Where do you see those dark, dark roots in the first disk of Two Pages? Certain thrivers my arse. Even when they do start to sound interesting again (ie west London sound, Pavel Kostiuk, some bits of the new LP)that hideous pretension of organic-fruit-juice Soul+Spirit etc makes me wanna blow chunks. I don't doubt their skills, mind.

c/ref your SoSolid thread, you have a real thing about being the underdog against the illuminati dontcha?

dave q = the overdog of the underbelly

Gilles peterson has a lot to answer for, i dont think even that fact that 4 hero produced such great tunes as Dr kirk's nightmare cancels out the last 2 dire albums.

im sure you will all agree. their best track is "the last ever bleep track"

Two Pages second disc is pretty amazing, their new albums have to much gloss and shiny shit on 'em. Rough that shit up! Also, Parallel Universe is probably their best. Great beatage.

anyone know what the track was that used the descending quasi-indian riff from "journey from the light" was? vocals-free (& strings-free, possibly) - it might have been a dub or something. i used to have an mp3 that labelled it as "journey from the light", but was mislabelled. any help?
(haha this will only help nz listeners - that riff sounds sort of like the subliminals' "speed of sound", or at least one of the tracks off united state)