Mocean Worker

Adam Dorn has himself quite a pedigree to live up to, what with a father who produced records for the likes of Roberta Flack and John Coltrane. But nowadays, studio wizards needn’t suffer relative obscurity while making classic tunes. Dorn may bring along legends like experimental guitar-tician Bill Frissell and tenor sax-man David "Fathead” Newman alongside newer artisans such as Rinôçérôse’s flutist Frank Guathier and jazz singer Jane Monheit (among many others), but his Mocean Worker alter ego still gets top billing. Deserves it, too. Struggling to cohesively combine live and sampled artists, too many jazz-tronic cocktails come off lukewarm, but Enter the MoWo!, Dorn’s first full-length in almost four years, arrives perfectly chilled. Though ditching the drum & bass substructure of his past work, its mix of dusted beatscapes with organic jazz and throwback funk — bolstered by an inspired minimalist remix of Nina Simone’s dark-as-night "Blackbird” — manages the difficult task of nodding to clichés without indulging in them.