Hero

Saxophonist, composer and arranger Chris Bowden has had a circuitous — and sometimes troubled — route in music, from working on the fringes of the Acid Jazz scene and playing for Basement Jaxx, to writing his own sprawling symphony-like pieces that could veer from Weather Report to Mingus to Debussy in a few bars. But some of his very finest work was with 4Hero. He played on several tracks on Two Pages, and made this utterly extraordinary EP with 4Hero in 1997: just two long tracks, “Hero” and “Lullaby” on vinyl with the extra five minutes of “Greedy” on a CD release. It has production and beat programming to match the most futurist experiments of the likes of Photek, yet sounds entirely “organic.” Its keening vocals have a sense of Radiohead at their most rarefied, and even foreshadow James Blake's work a decade plus later. Though Bowden’s strings and 4Hero’s rhythms are instantly recognisable, the alchemy between them creates something else again — three songs that all have a similar, almost unbearably sad and lovely, mood, but sound like nothing else before or since.