Album: David Axelrod

David Axelrod, Mo Wa

The veteran producer and arranger of symphonic jazz and funk has been around since the 1950s, and worked with the likes of Electric Prunes, Lou Rawls and Cannonball Adderley. If David Axelrod sounds like a record from a bygone era, it's partly because it is: the rhythm tracks were originally laid down in 1968 for a proposed Prunes album. Instead, Axelrod has used them as the background for radical conscience rapping from Dr Dre associate Ras Kass, and atmospheric soundscapes evocative of grainy Seventies cop movies. Cool enough to lower the temperature of your living room by 10 degrees.