4hero: Morning Changes EP

Dego and Marc Mac, together as 4hero, became instant legends in the late ’90s drum-and-bass scene when their Mercury Prize nominated debut album Two Pages dropped. Since then, they’ve all but exterminated that high BPM aspect of their sound, instead focusing on more soulful, orchestral jazz. This EP takes the biggest song from 2007’s Play with the Changes, their third and most recent album, and castes it to four very different artists for a thorough reworking. Immediately, the Daddy G of Massive Attack and L.A.O.S. versions rise above the expected.

Daddy G reconstitutes the originally Curtis Mayfield like, string led “Morning Child” into a vintage trip-hop banger with a creepy guitar, menacing bass, and twittering synth work. LargeAmountOfSoul takes the cut back to 4hero’s classy jazz-and-bass roots so well, you wish they’d go back there themselves. That said, the Landau Orchestra remix is almost totally redundant, essentially stripping back the strings of the original and adding a few vocal tweaks, while the less said about the grease-ball disco house version supplied by Danya Vodovoz, the better. For a remix EP, though, two out of four ain’t bad, and there are a few instrumentals to satisfy the target market deejays for which this is truly intended. As such, it’s an all around winner.