Mocean Worker (aka Adam Dorn) makes the connection between jazz and drum-n-bass understandable because the samples he soaks his machinated rhythms in aren't influenced by classic jazz, they are classic jazz. If you think that last sample sounded like a real swing piano, or the sample before that sounded like a real horn section, or that wicked low-end sounds like a real bass, it's because they all are, stoopid.

Dorn gets it from pops (Joel Dorn, who produced Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly") and from his own jazz training. In fact, before he turned the corner and discovered jungle, he was all over NYC as a jazz journeyman. Even after putting out Home Movies From the Brainforest, the best sample/ electronic album I heard in 1998, he compiled Groove Jammy, an LP's worth of forgotten rare groove selections for 32 Jazz (the label he co-owns with pops), perhaps just to prove where his roots lie.

Dorn touched on his jazz background when making his first drum-n-bass album, but it was his digital animation that set him apart. Dorn gave the same life to the synthetic elements of electronic music that the jazz elements already possessed. Like Kraftwerk, he emphasized mechanics, but he also gave the machine a heart. That said, it's the roots that deem Mixed Emotional Features conversely impressive and second- banana to Home Movies From the Brainforest's brilliance.

All the key elements are still there. It starts with a moody breakbeat massage called "Rene M" whose 8+ minutes sail right on by before dissolving into the sinister drun-n-bass of "Detonator." But two- and- a- half minutes in to the song, the drums hit the ground running as a horn section is looped into a frenzy. That's when you begin to notice obvious differences between Mixed Emotional Features and Brainforest.

On one hand, Mocean Worker is more deliberate about merging jazz with drum-n-bass in his sophomore outing. The best efforts are the 180 bpm blaxploitation groove of "Jello Dart," the serious sampleslaying of "Counts, Dukes and Strays" (hint: the title is truth in advertising) and the electronic big band that marks "Times of Danger."

On the other hand, they're all basically jazz songs mixed up with drum-n-bass loops. Some of you may be thinking, "Isn't that the point?" Well, no. Brainforest was a new kind of jazz. Even when Dorn did get derivative (like when teaming up with a sampled Mahalia Jackson for the sublime "Summertime/ Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"), he still managed to make completely fresh synthetic/ organic creations. This time, it's often just old creations performed in a new way.

That's not to detract from Mixed Emotional Features, because it's still steeped in the experimental traditions of both its sonic influences. Dorn is a master at breathing life into digital effects while combining them with rare and rewarding grooves, but this record has nothing on its older brother.

-Shan Fowler