Two Pages

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.|