With his newest release, Enter the MoWo!, Adam Dorn, a.k.a. Mocean Worker, has melded the worlds of jazz and DJ culture and made it work. It should be no surprise to anyone familiar with Dorn's background that he's been able to float so easily between the two disparate genres-after all, his father, Joel Dorn, was the five-time Grammy award-winning producer of Charles Mingus and Roberta Flack back in the '60s and '70s. Enter the MoWo! is loaded with amazing horns, bass, piano, and percussion, and features the live musicianship of Steve Bernstein and Bill Frissel, among other contemporary free jazz greats, and is infectiously and contagiously upbeat. "It's mostly just a fun, funky, record, I hope," says Dorn of the album. "It's a jazz record, but it's really not a jazz record. It's really kind of an electronic record where there's that spirit of jazz, but it's mostly just a funky, fun, sort of cheeky record that has it's darker, deeper moments that are few and far between."

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Cosmik: First of all, what is your background in music? How did you get started?

Dorn: Well, I grew up in Philadelphia, and my father, actually, is a record producer, so I grew up surrounded by acts that he worked with. By the age of 12 or 13, I kind of knew I was going to be a musician and go into this business. My father's job and his career were so present in my childhood that it just made... well, I was just surrounded by music. So by the time I was 15 I started playing bass, by the time I was 16 I was already playing on records and out of school. I didn't even finish high school. I started working with a producer named Marcus Miller, who let me hang out and work on records with Luther Vandross and Miles Davis and David Sanborn, like, really working on records at a very young age. And I've basically been doing that since then. I was primarily a bass player when I was a kid. When I was 25, I stopped playing, and I just started getting into electronic music and getting into sampling and producing other people. And that's kind of where I am now. I started the whole Mocean Worker thing then, and it's about 6 years ago now.

Cosmik: Did you go to college at all?

Dorn: I went Berklee School of Music up in Boston for three semesters. I got a music scholarship there. I got my GED literally within a month of turning 16, and I got a full scholarship to Berklee and I didn't take advantage of it. I don't think school was in the books for me. I went to Berklee, and I realized that I was spending more time coming back to New York to work on records than actually going to class, so I was like, well, it's really nice that they gave me a scholarship, but I guess I can learn just as much about music from the professionals I already know. So that's what I did.

Cosmik: Where did the name "Mocean Worker" come from?

Dorn: Oh, who knows? Basically, it was supposed to be spelled normally, "Motion," but there was a company at the time that made software called Motion Worker software; it's for mixing consoles, and I just didn't want to.. I didn't know if it was trademarked or copy written, so basically, it's just a little play on words that doesn't really end up meaning anything.

Cosmik: Do people give you weird pronunciations of the name?

Dorn: Oh, yeah, especially in other countries. I did about forty interviews in Brazil for the last record because it did well down there, and no one pronounced it "correctly." I mean, can you imagine, coming from Portuguese to English, I had people saying "Mo-see-an"; the French think it's some amazing, weird Latin word, but they don't know what it is. And I'm just like, "Think 'motion.' Movement." They buy into that.

Cosmik: This record seems more live jazz based than your previous work. What drew you to doing this kind of record?

Dorn: I really grew up around a lot of jazz, and I really love... I'm a musician first, and then, I guess, an electronic artist or remixer second, at least in my estimation. Most people who know me as Mocean Worker have never heard me play an instrument, but I kind of wanted to make this record and have it be more of a... I can't think of the right way to phrase it. It's more representative of like who I am and what I'm into in terms of what I would listen to at home. The last couple of records have been, like, you know, more sort of feeding a certain kind of DJ culture and more like trying to be in the moment of what's going on, and I think there's something cool about doing that, but this is just more of a lifestyle kind of snapshot of what I want to listen to at home, the kind of music I really love. This record represents that. This is like my fun sort of chill-out, loungey kind of jazzy record.

Cosmik: Were the songs on this album collaborations, or samples of, say, Bill Frisell and Steve Bernstein's music?

Dorn: No. They are songs and melodies I've written that these musicians interpreted. So actually, all the songs were written and space was left for them to either improvise or to play specific things that I had written. It's one thing to sample someone and manipulate it, but it's another thing to sort of sample something, use it as a framework, and then have it replaced by a real person. And I think that's part of the interesting thing where sort of electronic music and jazz can meet up and actually become a very potent combination of musics. Some writer wrote a review of this record recently, and he completely missed the point of it. He claimed it sounded like someone made a beat and then someone else just soloed over it, and that was it. But that's not what happened! I wrote stuff for these musicians to play; these are my songs how I envisioned them from even before the musicians were contacted. You know, it's a jazz record, but it's really not a jazz record. It's really kind of an electronic record where there's that spirit of jazz, but it's more just like... I think jazz is like a four-letter word. Most people get scared when they hear "jazz." This is kind of like a lifestyle, funky, fun, sort of cheeky record that has it's darker, deeper moments that are few and far between. It's mostly just a fun, funky, record. I hope.

Cosmik: It's very happy and positive-sounding.

Dorn: Yeah, that was the goal! I'm happy and positive-sounding, I think.

Cosmik: Where did you get the song titles from?

Dorn: "Chicka boom boom boom" is an obvious one, because that's just the vocal line from the song. They're all just stupid things that pop into my head. I mean, how could you possibly take something like "Shamaladingdong?" It's not meant to be taken seriously! So it's kind of one of those things where all these things kind of work toward having anything that's jazzy or instrumental or funky or whatever... The titles are meant to disarm you and make you think, "I'm about to have fun! I should have fun listening to song called 'Chicka boom boom boom.'"I know it almost sounds like children's music titles, but, you know, they're just supposed to be fun. Like the song, "That's What's happening Tonight" is called that from a vocal snippet in the songs saying, "That's what's happening tonight." It's pretty straightforward stuff.

Cosmik: Do you perform in public, too?

Dorn: I DJ and I do a series of live things where I make films to the songs, and I use old footage that's found footage. I've been going around to different art venues lately, like this place I recently performed in up in Massachusetts called Mass Mocha, and it's like this huge, beautiful theatre, with like a fifty-foot screen. It's really more of a performance space than it is a club. I've been going around and doing performances like that because I find that the arts world is really open to DJ culture, but on a level where some thought has been put into it. I kind of mix some live performance with some DJing and visual, and it's fun, it's a nice combination. I think that what I'm doing now melds more into that world than, say, going to your traditional DJ venues and DJing for three hours for a bunch of kids full of drugs. I'm not really into that. But who is? I think that it's much more interesting and fulfilling to do [this]. I used to tour as a DJ, all over the planet, and it was literally just like, club, club, club, you know. There's no connection with your audience when you're doing that, really. You have a good time, but there's no connection in terms of doing something artistic.

© 2005 - Holly Day