Mocean Worker
Mixed Emotional Features
[Palm Pictures]
Rating: 7.5
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