4HERO

4hero are a UK act based in Dollis Hill, North-West London. The main members of this group are Dennis ‘Dego’ McFarlane and Mark ‘Marc Mac’ Clair. As well as being a recording artists, they also run the Reinforced record label.

They are renowned as pioneers and frontrunners in jungle and drum and bass, and the group obtained a Mercury Music Prize nomination for their 1998 album Two Pages. Their style was initially uptempo breakbeat house and techno, and has progressed to hardcore, jungle, and drum ‘n’ bass. Comparisons have been drawn between them and East London band Shut Up and Dance, with both bands evolving in the early 1990s as a rapprochement between the breakbeat-driven African-diasporic musical structures of hip-hop and reggae, and the dark, European reconstruction of the techno sound popularised by the likes of Joey Beltram, CJ Bolland, and Mundo Muzique. 4hero both embraced the dynamics of populist rave culture, and maintained an avant-garde status as innovative and experimental producers. They trail blazed genre-crossing studio techniques like timestretching and pitch-shifting.