page_title: Song of Innocence
section_title: Legacy and influence
hierarchical_section_title: Song of Innocence / Legacy and influence
caption_attribution_description: English: Launch party for MoWax Japan at club Blue in Tokyo, August 6, 1997. Original article archived at Vh1.com! www.vh1.com/artists/news/899/19970813/dj_shadow.jhtml
context_page_description: Song of Innocence is the debut album by American composer and producer David Axelrod. It was released in October 1968 by Capitol Records.
  Axelrod sought to capitalize on the experimental climate of popular music and composed the album as a suite-like tone poem interpreting Songs of Innocence, a 1789 illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. He recorded the album at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles with an orchestra and studio musicians from the Wrecking Crew collective, including keyboardist and conductor Don Randi, guitarist Al Casey, bassist Carol Kaye, and drummer Earl Palmer.
  Song of Innocence is an instrumental jazz fusion record that incorporates elements of classical, rock, funk, pop, and theatre music. It is arranged for bass, drums, and string instruments, written in the rock idiom with tempos centered on rock-based patterns by Palmer. Axelrod used contrast in his orchestral compositions, interspersing their euphoric psychedelic R&B structures with dramatic, harrowing arrangements to reflect the supernatural themes found in Blake's poems. The music's reverent, psychedelic overtones evoke the poet's themes of innocence and spirituality.
context_section_description: Song of Innocence was one of many concept albums recorded as rock music was developing in various directions during the late 1960s, following in the wake of the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was innovative for its original application of both rock and jazz techniques. According to music journalist Zaid Mudhaffer, the term "jazz fusion" was coined in a review of the record when it was released. Axelrod followed the album in 1969 with the similarly Blake-inspired Songs of Experience, which adapted Gunther Schuller's third stream concept to baroque orchestrations and rock, pop, and R&B rhythms and melodies. Both albums established Axelrod as an unpredictable, challenging conceptual artist. His instrumental interpretations of Blake were the first in jazz, followed in 1971 by Rafał Augustyn's Niewinność and Adrian Mitchell's musical Tyger: A Celebration of William Blake with composer Mike Westbrook; Westbrook later composed more Blake-inspired works, including The Westbrook Blake: "Bright as Fire" (1980).
  During the late 1990s, Axelrod's records were reassessed and considered innovative by critics, including Song of Innocence, which was regarded as a classic. Mojo cited it as "the heart of Axelrod's legacy", while John Mulvey from NME called it "sky-kissingly high and divine", finding Axelrod versatile enough to "soar above his own pretensions", Writing for AllMusic, John Bush said the album "sounded like nothing else from its era", while Thom Jurek argued that it continued to sound new upon each listen due to a lack of "cynicism and hipper-than-thou posturing" in the music. In a four-and-a-half star retrospective review, Jurek said it was innovative in 1968 and still "withstands the test of time better than the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album that allegedly inspired it". Giving it a five-out-of-five score, Tiny Mix Tapes said it sounded engagingly magnificent and diverse, citing it as one of the most dynamic musical fusions and "one of the most unique and thought provoking musical efforts of the last several decades".
  Axelrod's music was also rediscovered and sampled by leading disc jockeys in the 1990s including hip hop producers. When sampling in hip hop peaked during the early and mid-1990s, they searched for archived records with atmospheric beats and strings to sample. Los Angeles-based disc jockey B+ recalled finding a copy of Song of Innocence at a Goodwill in Culver City and said it appealed to him because of its dissonant quality, musical dynamics, and string sound: "This big sound. It was like somehow [Axelrod] was summoning the future, that you can project this environment, this moment into the future." Electronica pioneers such as DJ Cam and DJ Shadow also sampled Song of Innocence. The latter producer sampled the record's choral themes and piano motifs on his influential debut album Endtroducing..... (1996). "The Smile" was sampled by Pete Rock on his 1998 song "Strange Fruit" and by DJ Premier on Royce da 5'9"'s 2009 song "Shake This". "Holy Thursday" was frequently sampled by producers, including The Beatnuts on their 1994 song "Hit Me with That", UNKLE on their 1998 song "Rabbit in Your Headlights", and Swizz Beatz on Lil Wayne's 2008 song "Dr. Carter".
  The renewed interest in Axelrod's work prompted Stateside Records to reissue Song of Innocence in 2000. Reviewing the re-release, Now wrote that after sounding odd during the 1960s, the songs had become "a sampler's dream come true – who knew?" David Keenan attributed Axelrod's sampling legacy to "the original badass drummer" Palmer. In his appraisal for The Wire, he facetiously critiqued that the songs "may reek of stale joss sticks and patchouli-scented self-actualisation, but in their very datedness they somehow sound very modern." Pitchfork journalist Sean Fennessey later said Axelrod's first two records were "essential if only as a tour guide through early 90s hip-hop", having "literally been a rap producer's delight for years". In a 2013 list for Complex, DJ and production duo Kon and Amir named "Holy T
caption: Song of Innocence has been sampled by various record producers since being rediscovered in the 1990s, including DJ Shadow (left).
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "600", "Image YResolution": "600", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0", "Image DateTime": "2008:01:04 22:54:17", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2983", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2045"}