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Set the Mood is the debut studio album of English singer-songwriter David Jordan''.

Background and production
David Jordan showed an interest in music from a young age. His early influences included Prince, James Brown and Frank Sinatra. As a child at school, Jordan was considered an "outsider" and had few friends because of his strong drive to be involved in songwriting. His ambition to become a professional singer-songwriter remained as he became a teenager and he was determined to sign a record deal. Jordan studied drama at college during the daytime, worked at a Starbucks coffehouse in New Oxford Street in the evening, and then went to Fortress Studios in Old Street, where he worked on songs with his friend Jack Freegard, a music producer. Jordan also spent some of his time with his friend Amy Winehouse, who he would play computer games with. The teenager's other associates included a group of aspiring pop artists, who were all later signed to Simon Fuller's management company 19 Entertainment.

At the age of 16, Jordan wrote a song called "Sun Goes Down". The singer remarked that the lyrics to the song are about the parties he and his friends had at Old Street Studios in London. He said, "I wrote it about what I used to see at the parties. It's about when the sun goes down in London, all the madness starts." Jordan also stated that the song was "a pure party track" that he wrote when some of his friends were unhappy with their lives. "I wanted to try and turn it around for them", he added. "Sun Goes Down" came to the attention of ZTT Records co-founder Jill Sinclair, who is married to producer Trevor Horn. According to Jordan, she thought that the song was "great" and that it could be a hit, and subsequently signed him to a record deal.

Steve Lipson and Horn—who has worked with Seal, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and ABC—served as producers for Set the Mood. Initially, Jordan was unaware of Horn's work in the music industry. "My reaction was, 'Who?' I'd never heard of ABC, Seal or Frankie Goes To Hollywood. I wasn't aware of Trevor's amazing track record but when I discovered who he'd been involved with I felt honoured." The production of the album took two years to complete and was a process that involved Horn taking recordings of Jordan's voice and adding them with some of his own material.

Prior to the release of the album and in his television debut, Jordan performed "Sun Goes Down" at the Royal Variety Performance on December 3, 2007. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh were in attendance at the annual gala. The Liverpool Daily Post's Phil Key stated that Jordan's performance "went down well", and Jeremy Austin of The Stage agreed, stating that the singer "impressed with his Prince/Michael Jackson-esque routine".

Release and reception
Upon the release of Set the Mood, Jordan was dubbed the British version of Justin Timberlake and compared with established artists such as Prince, Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz and Terence Trent D'Arby. Caspar Llewellyn Smith of The Guardian stated that such comparisons were "a shade simplistic, but also not a problem". He added of Set the Mood, "This fine debut is bursting with hook-filled pop which invites the inner rocker to stray just the right side of making a tit of himself."

Music journalist Paul Lester, also writing for The Guardian, expressed that people could be "seduced" by Jordan's "rocked-out R&B, his searing electric soul with sassy-male falsetto vocals, [and] his fairly straight take on well-produced Kravitz/Seal-style guitar-funk-pop." Lester stated that "godlike genius" producer Horn had provided the album with "oomph, heft and [the] detailed richness it might have otherwise lacked". He said that Horn had "[rescued] it from the realms of the mellifluous and mundane". Of the single "Place In My Heart", the journalist commented, "[The track] introduces the hardline according to David Jordan, the melody roaming freely while the vocals veer from I'm-a-sensitive-guy-me soft'n'sweet to but-I-have-healthy-hetero-drives gruff'n'manly." Lester stated that "Sun Goes Down" was "Celtic and jaunty", while "Set The Mood" was "finger-clickingly suave". The music critic added that "Sweet Prince" was "the Terry D'Arby-ish ballad" and that "Love Song" was "strikingly, struttingly Jacko-esque". Lester concluded that Set the Mood was "a fabulous introduction to the many and varied talents of David Jordan."

Personnel

 * Production and music
 * Steve Lipson – album producer, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, percussion
 * Trevor Horn – executive producer, extra mixer, programmer, bass guitar
 * Dave McCracken – additional producer
 * Tim Hutton – additional producer
 * Jack Freegard – additional producer
 * Simon Pilton – additional producer
 * Patrizio Moi – additional producer
 * Heff Moraes – engineer
 * Tim Weidner – engineer, bass guitar, piano, percussion
 * Graham Archer – assistant engineer
 * Chris Waugh – assistant engineer
 * Jonathan Taylor-Webb – assitant engineer
 * Robert Orton – mixer, programmer, keyboards/piano, percussion
 * Jamie Muhoberac – programmer, keyboards/piano, bass guitar, percussion
 * Anne Dudley – orchestral arrangement, harpsichord
 * Norman Watson – photography


 * Keyboards
 * Robert Taggart – keyboards, piano, organ
 * Pete Murray – keyboards, piano
 * Chris Braide – keyboards


 * Percussion
 * Frank Ricotti – percussion
 * Bob Knight – drums
 * Taz Mattar – drums
 * Oliver Boorman – drums
 * Ash Soan – drums


 * Brass
 * Richard Clews – horn
 * Hugh Seenan – horn
 * Richard Watkins – horn


 * Guitar
 * David Ranger – guitar
 * Paul Sayer – guitar
 * Tim Pierce – guitar
 * Phil Palmer – guitar
 * Steven Edward – bass guitar, synth bass guitar
 * Chris Laurence – double bass guitar
 * Mary Scully – double bass guitar
 * Strings
 * Piers Gibbon – Jew's harp
 * Bob Loveday – fiddle, violin
 * Perry Montague-Mason – violin
 * Simon Baggs – violin
 * Mark Berrow – violin
 * Jonathan Evans-Jones – violin
 * Patrick Kiernan – violin
 * Boguslaw Kostecki – violin
 * Julian Leaper – violin
 * Gaby Lester – violin
 * Rita Manning – violin
 * Everton Nelson – violin
 * Emlyn Singleton – violin
 * Paul Willey – violin
 * Rolf Wilson – violin
 * David Woodcock – violin
 * Rachel Stephanie Bolt – viola
 * Morgan Goff – viola
 * Garfield Jackson – viola
 * Peter Lale – viola
 * Don McVay – viola
 * Bruce White – viola
 * David Daniels – cello
 * Paul Kegg – cello
 * Anthony Lewis – cello
 * Anthony Pleeth – cello