Customer Reviews

Parallel Universe

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Parallel Universe is generally considered to be the second-best drum 'n bass album ever recorded (the top spot goes to Goldie's Timeless LP, also released in 1995), most likely for two reasons. The first is due to its out-of-print status for most of its existence, having first been released on the late Reinforced Records and then reissued on the similarly ill-fated Crammed Discs label. Its absence during jungle's peak years (1994-1997) simply didn't allow enough people to hear it and gave ample opportunity for Goldie and Roni Size to blitz dancefloors worldwide.

The second reason has to do with the album's fey science-fiction theme, which is more Sylvia Browne than Orson Scott Card. Timeless had its sights set on the cosmos, but beneath the otherworldly atmosphere was the soul of hardcore jungle--a direction that Goldie would later fully embrace. Parallel Universe, by contrast, makes no bones about its mystic sci-fi inclinations or those inclinations' inability to jive with mainstream audiences. Where Goldie came off as a mad junglist trying his hand at prettiness, 4hero (the duo of Marc Clair and Dego MacFarlane) sound like kids raised on astrology and mysticism who one day stumbled upon jungle.

So it's no small wonder how natural their craft seems to come to them. Placed sonically between their early hardcore 7" singles ("Mr. Kirk's Nightmare") and their later overcooked fusion bombs (Creating Patterns, their latest LP), Parallel Universe seamlessly blends toughness and loveliness for an equally head-nodding and soul-searching musical trip. The intricacy of 4hero's breakbeats has thus far been unmatched by anyone in the field, period. The beats aren't especially fast, but what's speed anyway? You don't see Designs & Mistakes on any Top 10 lists, do you? Like Q-Tip and Phife Dawg's rhyming, the stress of the beats is on fluidity and interplay.

With the exception of the beautifully nocturnal "Universal Love," most of the tracks on Parallel Universe tend to be similar in structure. Usually five minutes in length, they begin with a soft, simple keyboard line or an oblique vocal sample before launching into dynamic, stuttering breakbeats. Then, about three minutes in, a beautiful pad synthesizer swoons and joins the breaks for a profoundly spiritual minute-and-a-half before disappearing and letting the drums take the song to the finish line. It's a formula, but oh, what a formula it is, and hearing the formula played out in different contexts gives one the sense of it's utter perfection--a bit like the human circulatory system. This makes Parallel Universe more focused and precise than Timeless, without the feeling that Dego and Marc are overexerting themselves.

Finally, 4hero understood what Jan Jelinek understood when he recorded Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records: subtlety is everything. With its syncopated chimes and slanted synth swabs, Parallel Universe winks at jazz without ever stating it explicitly. It's a modus operandi that 4hero apparently forgot when they recorded the slick, bloated Two Pages three years later and Creating Patterns after another three. On those albums, their new age inclinations became more burdensome than endearing, with a mess of stringed, brass and electronic instruments forming "jazz" in quotations that always threatened to implode in on itself. In a way, Parallel Universe serves to remind us of a purer time for drum 'n bass, before the jazz-fusion monster even became a valid issue. In a perfect world--nay, universe--where the stars are aligned and the nights are always crisp and sweet, Parallel Universe would be the single best drum 'n bass album ever to see the light of day.

After 5 years of listening to this amzing piece of work I still have to say that it is one of the finest works of dnb (Along with a guy called geralds "black secret technology") that was ever produced. It influenced dnb in a way that no album ever after did. Its just timeless.

not being a heavy drum and bass listener myself, always leaning more towards downtempo and house beats, i was surprised by the listenability of this album. it's melodic but not too grandiose, approachable and hard hitting (as d&b should be.) a good well rounded drum and bass album, that i would highly recommend for avid fans of the genre and newcomers alike. track 6 is a personal fav.

It has to be said that 4-Hero's "Parallel Universe" album from 1995 is a work of such extreme excellence that it boggles the mind. It can change the direction of ANY mood, convince even the most jaded music listener that there is musical life beyond what we normally hear and ultimately solidifies it's self on all who do hear it as a thing of pure perfection.

Tracks which I personally believe you must pay special attention to are:

2. No Imitation
4. Talk Around Town
7. Terraforming
9. Follow Your Heart (Part Two)
10. Shadow Run
12. Sounds From The Black Hole
14. Solar Emissions


Mark Mac and Dego must have sold their souls for this one.

If you don't have it - F%@KING GET IT!

I can't stress this enough.



Reinforced Records R.I.P. (recent closure in 2005)

The "R" will always be in my heart.


(CLRH2O // Force Recordings, Pattern Recognition, Separate Entity, Hallucination, Stateside Collective)

With its Kenny G-ish saxophone and straightforward diva vocals, the first track, Universal Love, sounds like a bid for Top 40 airplay (I have to admit it's pretty catchy, though). After that, it's pure breakbeat science: imaginative, layered, time-stretched pulses that go in and out, backwards and forwards in elaborate, relentless sonic landscapes. The latter tracks, as a unit, could be a kind of sci-fi concept album, with titles, spoken word samples, and sounds devoted to Martian colonization, solar radiation, "wrinkles in time," and other extraterrestrial concepts. More on the listening than the dancing end of the drum-and-bass spectrum, this CD is amazing technically, but has enough melody and feeling to make the science seem wildly romantic, rather than geeky.

THE ALBUM OF THE DECADE. THE LAST ALBUM OF THE DECADE THIS SIDE OF THE MILLENIUM (funny that!).

This is 4 Hero. This is Drum and Bass. This is the past. This is the present. This is the future.

Now deleted in the UK (annoying as 4 Hero are British!!) this album can only bought in America.

Get it from Amazon.com - I did!

Along with Goldies "TIMELESS" album this album by 4HERO is one of (if not THE) first albums to determine the new quality and direction for Drum and Bass. All the tracks on the album are very atmospheric. You can enjoy them both by lounging in your chair and by dancing to it. The songs vary from "hardcore, raw sounds to groovy, spacy structures. I am a great Drum and Bass enthousiast and I can say that this album is the one of the best albums that I have in my collection of over 300 albums. Even if you're not a Drum and bass enthousiast, you'll like this one. BUY IT.

Basically, with sounding too heavy, this album helped me through a REALLY tough time, the music is still ahead of it's time, deep, absorbing and involving. Jazz/Funk/DnB iconz ....... but no one seems to realise!

"Textures, layers... that's what it all shakes into, pure contour and tone.

Parallel Universe was the Second.

A future myth, it is the sound and number of the matrix of your heart."

If you have recently discovered 4 Hero through their award winning album "2 Pages" then I highly recommend this unsung classic. It is my album of the decade. Released in Summer of '95 it took drum n' bass into a deeper cerebal realm, which hasn't been bettered yet. You need it on your shelf, believe me :)

Sadly I can't recommend this album. I bought it based on the rave reviews here and the exerpts, which sounded intriguing. The problem here, as with much drum n bass, is the total lack of melodic content. 4 Hero do serve up some fine drum machine rhythms, but not much else. Their idea of melody is a few swooshy synth chords, a technique they return to again and again. You get vocal snippets here and there, but nothing substantial. What's really odd is the lack of quality bass drops. dnb? This is just d. Keep searching.