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Mocean across the ocean >> How godawful French pop made a drum & bass wizard out of Adam Dorn by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
This is true, because the maximum blandosity of Bruel and Kaas is light years from the colourful, complicated, energetic drum & bass found on Dorn's new album Mixed Emotional Features. But bills have to be paid, so when he followed his girlfriend to France a few years back, he took gigs without a fuss. It was while he was there that Dorn began tinkering around with beats and samples, not so much in spite of the session work but because of it. "Home Movies From the Brainforest was sort of a backlash, after working with Kaas," he says of his ultra-limited first release on the now-kaput Conscience label. "I sorta lost my mind. I mean, it was a solid nine months, with one day off every three months. I needed to do something unrelated that would make me feel good." Flying solo into electronica's airspace not only freed Dorn from the drudgery of session work, but also the constricting preconceptions that come with an education in jazz theory and composition at Boston's Berklee School of Music. While Dorn appreciates the groundwork, he's glad not to be stuck in the mud. "When I'm writing, I try to throw out as much of the formal training as possible, and just keep it so it'll make someone feel good or laugh or think. It's more about the emotional side of things than C-7 chords going to F major chords. "I think the area where my education is a plus is in where I grew up and the musicians I was exposed to." It should be pointed out that Dorn's dad is superstar producer Joel Dorn, so young Adam spent his formative years hangin' with the likes of Art Neville, Yusef Lateef and SNL musicman Hal Willner. More recently, the Dorns Sr. and Jr. have gone into business together with the 32 Jazz label, someplace Adam can apply his schooling, jazz-based and otherwise ("I know more about Judy Garland than any other straight man on the planet. And not necessarily because I want to..."). Given Dorn's wide-angle view of music, it's no surprise that he has little patience with the empty attitude and pretension he sees as so prevalent in the drum & bass scene. "I don't even consider myself a drum & basser. At Jingxi, I'll probably end up DJing some drum & bass and hard techno, but it's not really my bag, man. I hope people don't mind if I mix it up a bit. I don't know exactly how much time I have, but if I can set it up in movements--drum & bass for a minute, house for a minute, some fucked-up techno for a minute--that'd be perfect. My favourite thing is if I can slip in some Coltrane or a Richard Pryor soundbite..." Yeah, sure. Go for it, man. Just make sure you leave the Roch Voisine at home. With DJ Maüs at Jingxi, Sunday, April 4 , 9pm, $5
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"I did a record with Roch Voisine! And two records and a tour with Patrick Bruel! I produced a record for Patricia Kaas!" There's a perverse sense of pride in the voice of New Yorker Adam Dorn as he lays these sordid revelations on me. Granted, the DJ/producer/occasional session bassist, who goes by the pseudonym Mocean Worker, doesn't have to hear this mainstream Franco-crap on a daily basis. But he gets the joke nonetheless. "I talk about it because anybody who knows my music will have to fall down laughing!"