4hero

Throughout drum'n'bass's formative skirmishes, Dego McFarlane and Marc Mac, performing together as 4hero, held steady positions at the genre's leading edge yet attracted far less notice than figures such as Goldie and Roni Size, chiefly because the duo issued little new 4hero material across jungle's decisive commercial window of 1994 to 1997. Although the pair had first emerged from London's mid-'80s hip-hop underground, they later gravitated toward the hardcore and rave circuits, cutting enduring tracks including "Mr. Kirk's Nightmare" and "Journey from the Light" for their own Reinforced Records, one of the scene's strongest imprints. Those recordings ranked among the earliest to map the rave movement's darker undercurrents and foreshadow drum'n'bass's more ominous direction. Ironically, once the jungle community caught up with and became fixated on 4hero's advances by the late '90s, the duo had already shifted toward a smoother, fusion-oriented aesthetic on their 1998 major-label release Two Pages.

Initially the 4hero name denoted an actual four-piece lineup. Dego and Marc Mac first connected with Iain Bardouille and Gus Lawrence in 1986 through shared enthusiasm for hip-hop and participation at the Strong Island FM pirate station broadcasting from London's Camden district. By 1989 Marc Mac and Dego were producing percussive breakbeat experiments and deepening their involvement in the rave and hardcore breakbeat world, while Bardouille and Lawrence increasingly oversaw operations at the newly established Reinforced Records. The label's first release was the Rising Sun EP by Marc and Dego under the 4hero credit. Its follow-up, Combat Dance, sold briskly within dance circles, although an unreliable distributor withheld the expected earnings. Throughout the late '80s and early '90s the pair traveled extensively across Britain, performing DJ sets and live shows at raves while striving to generate sufficient revenue to sustain Reinforced. After meeting the group at one such event, Goldie joined the label as an A&R representative and engineer; he quickly became a regular presence at Reinforced and absorbed production methods from Dego and Marc Mac.

Even while still rooted in the rave environment, 4hero's next recordings displayed a mounting fascination with the opposite pole of rave's increasingly mournful atmosphere. The single "Mr. Kirk's Nightmare" incorporated dialogue of a police officer informing a suburban parent of a fatal overdose, and the titles "Journey from the Light" and "Cookin Up Ya Brain" conveyed their thematic purpose plainly. The duo's 1991 debut album In Rough Territory likewise traced a foreboding route through the breakbeat landscape, placing 4hero well ahead of contemporaries and at the vanguard of a sound that would not crest until more than five years later.

Rather than persisting along that darkside breakbeat trajectory, 4hero chose to branch outward. Dego launched the Tek 9 project, which fused his interests in hip-hop, jazz fusion, and intermittent breakbeats, while Marc Mac introduced the direct hard techno of Nu Era. Reinforced's next full-length projects were two compilations, Calling for Reinforcements and Definition of Hardcore, featuring 4hero and Tek 9 alongside newer acts such as Goldie's Rufige Cru and Marc Mac's Manix. Three years after their debut LP, 4hero delivered Parallel Universe, whose refined textures owed more to classic Detroit techno and Chicago house and stood at a considerable remove from the hardcore of In Rough Territory. As jungle surged commercially in 1994, 4hero was frequently cited as a foundational influence; Great Britain's BBC-TV even adopted the title of a Tek 9 track for its jungle documentary A London Sumtin'.

The duo remained largely inactive during 1995, yet Reinforced maintained its release schedule with Nookie's debut album The Sound of Music, another compilation titled Jungle Book, and multiple singles by Doc Scott. The following year Marc Mac issued the Nu Era full-length Beyond Gravity, Dego released Tek 9's first album It's Not What You Think It Is!?!!, and the pair unveiled a further alias with the self-titled Jacob's Optical Stairway album on R&S Records. That effort became the duo's most refined work to date, incorporating elevated synth lines, spacious fusion-inflected breakbeats, and contributions from Juan Atkins and Josh Wink.

Three years after their previous 4hero album, Dego and Marc Mac moved to Talkin' Loud and issued their third full-length Two Pages, which drew on more grounded jazz-fusion sources than the Jacob's Optical Stairway material. The record earned a nomination for Britain's Mercury Prize and led to the 1999 remix collection Two Pages Reinterpretations. Creating Patterns followed in late 2001, featuring appearances by Mark Murphy, Terry Callier, and Jill Scott. Six years afterward the similarly styled Play with the Changes appeared, incorporating work from Larry Mizell, Jody Watley, and Darien Brockington.