Though Grooverider and 4 Hero were both present at the creation of jungle, they've since gone their separate ways. Grooverider, who describes himself as a "soldier," has spent the last six years on a long march of DJ gigs and recruitment drives for the music. By contrast, 4 Hero's Dego MacFarlane and Marc Mac have joined
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jungle's underground resistance – although they're more likely to throw water balloons than hand grenades.
On Grooverider's long-awaited debut album, Mysteries of Funk, he and his engineer, Optical, a hot junglist of the moment, veer far and wide, from hard beats to jazzy atmospherics. A handful of tracks are quite good – "560"" works up an undeniable head of steam – but there's something dutiful about the music, as if Grooverider simply made a record because he thinks that's what big-time DJs are supposed to do. But if Grooverider is a soldier, he has already earned his stripes, stirring up dance-floor mayhem on a nightly basis. After all, the military is full of generals who never saw combat.
4 Hero, by contrast, think in terms of albums. On the first half of Two Pages, a double-disc set, the duo leavens jungle's usually claustrophobic textures with acoustic sounds – human voice, jazzy bass, a live string quartet – and actual songs. Sporting titles such as "Cosmic Tree" and "Spirits in Transit," Two Pages aspires to a vital tradition of African-American malarkey that can be traced back to Sun Ra's intergalactic hoo-ha and the cover art of mid-Seventies Earth, Wind and Fire albums. Erykah Badu updated this shtick for the hip-hop-R&B crowd, and now 4 Hero have done the same for jungle, creating an album as wide-ranging and melodically rich as Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life.
Two Pages' second disc is less ambitious – 4 Hero are in strict junglist mode – and that's fine, too. After all, you didn't mind when Stevie dropped the Big Statements and just called to say "I love you." (RS 799)
JEFF SALAMON
