Much like his former 4hero partner Dego, Marc Mac has been steadily ploughing his own personal furrow through post-broken-beat music, from the politicised hip hop of his sample-driven ‘beats & knowledge’ mixtapes to the organic Detroit-inspired techno of his long-running Nu Era project.
This year’s Fourth Kind album is a hard-to-pigeonhole blend of tight live drumming, warm synths and vocoders, with jazz fusion influences aplenty – perfect late-night listening. Standouts for me are the uptempo Take Me to Your Sky (at 11:15 in the embed below) and the downtempo cover of Heatwave’s super-smooth The Star of the Story. Cop a copy on Bandcamp.
Nothin' But Magic 