4HERO - TWO PAGES
Perhaps the most revolutionary piece of plastic to hit the country this year was the album Two Pages by the band known as 4hero. While the original UK release was a two-disc set (Two Pages, get it?), as is often the case the concept was screwed up before it reached the US. Instead, we have the whole album on one disc. Cheaper maybe, but not nearly as stylish. This minor nuisance can be forgiven by simply popping the stupid thing into your CD player and listening to the first song, "Loveless" in which the moon (Ursula Rucker) tells a story told to her by her sister, the Earth. The songs on the first half of the disc are mainly played on live instruments and feature the vocal talents of Face and Carol Crosby. The cascading melodies of "Planetaria" evoke the serenity of a dream, while "Third Stream" blends drum + bass with jazz in a completely organic way. "Wishful Thinking" is a wistful lament to an absent lover with a heartbreaking internal dialogue voiced by Crosby. The second half, shifts the emphasis to the electronic side of the coin, with the almost violently alien journey of the wonderfully titled "We Who Are Not As Others". Track 18, which I can't call by name because the title was written in an apparently brand-new language has the most conventional drum + bass sound to it, something that would surely be welcome at any rave, provided someone would know how to ask that the DJ play it. In the end, however the word that best sums up the album is "indescribable". While there are some jazz aspects, and some classical composition, and there is a spoken word bit, and even a brief rap, Two Pages is really incomparable to anything else there. Think Pink Floyd in terms of ambition, but in regards to sound it is like nothing else on the planet.
Review by Aram at: Frames Per Second
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