MOCEAN WORKER "Boombox" (Mowo Inc)
Add Date: 10/24/2023
Street Date: 10/27/2023
FCC: Clean
Focus Tracks: Boombox, Shammy Davis Jr's , Ah Yeah That's Right , Rahsaan Rahsaan
Formats: NACC Electronic, R&B/Soul, Hip-Hop, Chill, Top 200
MOWO! INC presents BOOMBOX, the long awaited new album by Mocean Worker, out on OCTOBER 27th. An extremely funky, bass-driven mix of breakbeats, electroswing and jazz.
Mocean Worker, a.k.a. Adam Dorn, has spent the last two decades galvanizing the sounds of electronic, jazz, soul, and funk to produce a singular and unmistakable style. Now, after an eight-year release hiatus, he returns with his tenth LP, BOOMBOX: a high-energy, deeply reverential, danceable, and genre-rejecting project that marks a fresh chapter in Mocean Worker’s acclaimed discography.
Guided by the inspiration of Stevie Wonder, Wayne Shorter, The Gap Band, and Motown sensibilities, Dorn sees BOOMBOX as as stylistic arrival. “This record sounds like what I wanted music to be like when I was 17 and didn’t know how to make music yet,” he says.
Dorn’s bass playing is the heart and soul of the album: “It’s a love letter to the bass,” Dorn says. While his career originated with his virtuosic bass playing, he opted not to play on his own records for his first eight albums—he focused on hyper-detailed mini-sampling, digital production, and synthesizers. “I shied away from showing my bass playing skills because it was my entry into the music business as a session musician, not an artist and a songwriter. Those days and that mindset are now over,” says Dorn. Now, bass hooks take center stage in BOOMBOX’s melodies, with a careful intention to avoid the overwrought cliche of the bass solo.
“I now feel like my style of bass playing and my composing style are in sync with one another,” Dorn says. “I finally feel like I’ve found a balance where one side isn’t denied or over exposed.”
After spending the last decade focused on composing for films and television, Dorn reached a revelation about his own creative practice. “I needed to create music for the love and pure joy of creating it again.” The 12 tracks poured out of him in less than three weeks, christening his new studio space in the woods of New York state.
The titular boombox is equal parts metaphorical and material. “In my studio sits an early ‘80s JVC boombox, and absolutely perfect example of the era. My father used it to check and evaluate mixes during his process of making some incredible records. This device was a constant companion in my childhood—it came to be a symbol for me of creation.”
Along with creating beats, a boombox allows blasting music for a party. Through recent years of societal upheaval, mass crises, and personal grief, Dorn offers a collection of upbeat tracks, but which never sacrifice substance. “BOOMBOX is a metaphor for partying, community, and gathering. This is about people gathering and enjoying something” Many of the songs are tributes to Dorn’s personal friends, including the late Hal Willner and Gerald Lee, and his musical heroes like Wayne Shorter and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. “The songs are written as thoughts for other people, something connected to them that is positive, artistic, intellectual.”
Above all, BOOMBOX epitomizes the musical philosophy of Mocean Worker—it is at once an elegy to art and artists of a bygone era and an upbeat celebration of the sound of the present.