Hip-Hop/Rap: Naked Funk and Electronica: Mocean Worker

One of the things I’ll miss about ABC TV’s The Practice is the theme song. While still maintaining some of the cheesy qualities of any TV theme song, it had some great elements of Electronica. I often felt silly for wishing that the theme song could go on longer or that I could find an album by the creator.

Because The Practice is not returning to next fall’s lineup, and because jamming to your favorite TV theme song isn’t exactly the stuff of audiophiles, I needed a replacement for my Practice fix. Thanks to Palm Pictures there’s plenty of jamming to electronic beats.


Naked Funk released their album, Evolution Ending, in 1999, but it still sounds fresh. The opening track, “Hydrophonic,” picks up on that need for more from The Practice theme song, drum breaks leading into a city driving beat, a motorcycle ride on Lower Wacker in Chicago, a helicopter screaming in between the skyscrapers. It is the stuff of a Mitsubishi car commercial. (There’s another admission: jamming to those Mitsubishi commercials. Anyone know of a listing on the Web of the music they’ve used?)

Naked Funk takes a fuzzy keyboard sound together with some tight, bright drum programming. Sure this could be just another dance record, but imagine it accompanying a movie. “Gilly Priest” is ready for a series of flashing images, the false stops and accents seemingly designed for introducing characters or significant scenes. The funky bass line of “Sour Angelica” could follow a group of high schoolers as they hit the town or it could lead the vice squad headed in for a bust. “Sana Fey” has mellow guitar-like lines, punctuated by loops, but there’s that air of tranquility, driving across the desert in Arizona near sunrise. Imagine what you will, but Naked Funk will definitely provide a soundtrack to fit.


It is no mistake that Mocean Worker’s 1999 album title calls to mind the big screen. Mixed Emotional Features is Soundtrack music for life. Mocean Worker (Adam Dorn) has worked on soundtracks for films, but here is a score for the unscripted, a score that you can play while you’re putting together your own life story. I realize that most Electronica is used in dance clubs and in the rave culture, however if that isn’t your scene, you shouldn’t shy away from checking out someone like Mocean Worker (a.k.a. MoWo).

Like Naked Funk fulfilling my jones for continuing to jam to The Practice theme song, Mixed Emotional Features continues certain movie-like atmospheres, helping me to once again to imagine my life as a movie, to imagine that I’m inside some Hollywood feature—although for some reason the tracks mainly getting me thinking I’m inside some crime fighting . Track 1, “Rene M,” you’re a spy or double-agent, developing that feeling from watching Val Kilmer in The Saint. Track 2, “Detonator,” is like some comic book hero team assembling to save the world from evil. Track 3, “Jello Dart,” finds you chasing the bad guys in a stairwell in TV’s The Streets of San Francisco. Track 4, “Counts, Dukes & Strays,” with its jazz samples, finds you meeting some enchanting figure in a dark nightclub. Ah, I could go on, lost in this movie-like world.

These 2 albums act like books, opening your imagination to new worlds, and everyone needs to use those creative recesses of their minds. It beats hankering for more TV theme songs while letting your brain go numb watching the tube. Music is the way to go!

Thanks to Palm Pictures, Pussyfoot Records, and Hyena Records.