Little Axe
Hard Grind
Fat Possum

The first two tracks of Moby's Play, "Honey" and "Find My Baby," were a mixture of techno, blues and gospel that must have sounded quite original to listeners unfamiliar with the work of Skip McDonald. Under the Little Axe moniker McDonald teamed up with former Tackhead bandmates and Sugarhill records house band alums Doug Wimbish and Keith LeBlanc to create some of the most invigorating blues music this side of R.L. Burnside. Back in 1994 — five years before Play — Little Axe released their debut album The Wolf That House Built. With a foundation of ambient dub, courtesy of producer extraordinaire Adrian Sherwood, McDonald and Co. constructed 12 chilled-out blues tracks, featuring samples of Howlin' Wolf and Leadbelly. Little Axe went a step further than Moby and integrated the samples and beats with McDonald's ace blues guitar licks and soulful vocals.

For the third Little Axe album, Hard Grind, McDonald enlisted Wimbish, LeBlanc, Sherwood and a number of backup musicians, most notably Alan Glen on harmonica. This time around, the dub is much more pronounced and the blues is even smoother. The album begins with an acoustic guitar arrangement of Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark as the night Cold as the Ground," which recalls the blues-meets-raga of the Ry Cooder and V.M. Bhatt colaboration A Meeting by the River. It serves as an invocation of sorts and sets the tone nicely for the next track, "Blues Story II," which features the narration of an old blues singer urging would-be blues musicians to "play what you feel". Throughout the album there is almost as much talking about the blues as singing the blues, though it never feels overly self-conscious or contrived.

While Hard Grind has some very strong songs — the gospel tinged "Down to the Valley" is a high point — nothing really rises to the level of a breakthrough single, which may be the artists' intention. The album deserves to be heard as a whole, much like other seminal works of ambience, such as KLF's Chill Out, the Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, or Future Sound of London's Lifeforms, each of which owes a debt to the dub music Sherwood pioneered in the late '70s and '80s. Conveniently it can be heard in its entirety via streaming audio on Fat Possum's website. Hard Grind isn't quite as revolutionary as the aforementioned classics, but it is just as sophisticated and enjoyable. Likewise, it may not be as radio-ready as Moby or Fatboy Slim, but those who want to dig a little deeper will find themselves richly rewarded by Little Axe's brand of blues.

— Nicholas Coleman (ncoleman@wesleyan.edu)