JAZZ
Album: Cinco de Mowo!
Rating: 3 Stars No one has a bigger or badder slice-and-dice sampling finger than Adam Dorn, a.k.a. Mocean Worker, who has recorded four albums of jazz infused beats-'n'-chains that extend the Di cutup paradigm like nobody's business. While old schoolers argue about the merits of sampling Billie Holiday and Charles Mingus over dance beats for jazz-ignorant club goers, Dorn assembles his joyous music with a sense of past glories and future tense possibilities. Cinco De Mowo! weds 1940s jumping brass and hot rhythms to contemporary hip-hop feel, like Count Basic's hopping brass section mixing it up with The Pharcyde or A Tribe Called Quest.
Dorn samples Rahsaan Roland Kirk for a couple tracks. Otherwise, he creates grooves from scratch, with a feel for outer space jazz continuity. Trumpeters Herb Alpert and Steven Bernstein join in, as does bassist Marcus Miller, but it's all just grist for Dorn's mighty mill. He makes the source material sound like something dredged up from a reel-to-reel tape or 78 shellac disc. Detours into balmy samba ("Que Bom") and ambient chill ("Reykjavik") eventually return to the hothouse sounds, including the soul-funk sauce of "Les And Eddie," and the '30s big-band swing of "Brown liquor" and "Son Of Sanford."
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