Mocean Worker- Enter the MoWo

Mocean Worker: Enter The MoWo (2004: Hyena Records)

Once upon a time, I went to hear a DJ called Mocean Worker (rhymes with “ocean”) spin at one of the many tiny drink-and-DJ clubs that dot the lower Manhattan landscape. I had already developed a powerful aversion to club music, since in New York you can’t buy a shirt, eat a meal, or even walk down the sidewalk without the insistent BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM of this season’s hot sub-sub-subvariety invading your space. Needless to say, I was present that night out of obligation (I worked for his label at the time (and he’s a great guy)), not because I was eager to drop $7 a drink to hear yet another so-called DJ spinning yet another set of big-beat bore.

The evening started predictably enough, with Mocean Worker interlacing house music of the not-offensive variety with his own Moog-thickened creations. Then things got weird. Some very interesting non-dance tracks poked through the haze of 808 beats, and I’m quite certain the theme from “Banana Splits” got worked in somehow. The intrusions left some people fairly nonplussed, since it is in fact rather jarring to jump directly from Dzihan and Kamien to, say, “The Dukes of Hazzard,” but for my part I left convinced this Mocean Worker guy was a genius, though perhaps a genius handcuffed by the conventions of the dance genre.

Mocean Worker is Adam Dorn, the son of veteran producer Joel Dorn who produced Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” as well as innumerable worthy albums for Atlantic and others, notably The Allman Brothers, David “Fathead” Newman, Dr. John, Charles Mingus, Bette Midler, and Lou Rawls.

Adam, himself a producer and jazz bassist was raised in the studio, soaking up the music being made around him and - it would seem - taking it all right in.

Dorn is in a uniquely lucky position in a couple respects. He is a graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music, an institution that is well known for producing superhuman musicians who can play anything at the drop of a hat. Moreover, he and his father ran the now-defunct labels 32 Jazz and Label M, which were dedicated to reissuing the best lost classics that Joel Dorn produced over the years, mostly jazz- and funk-inflected albums that could be licensed for a song (excuse the pun) from the original labels. (If you ever find any releases from these labels in used bins-- do not pass them up.)

Article Author: John Owen

John Owen is a music writer, multi-instrumentalist and music industry veteran based in coastal Massachusetts.

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