Back in 2021, LA producer MNDSGN released the album Rare Pleasure on Stones Throw. The album takes from a vast pool of influences from neo soul to jazz, Latin American music and heritage US soul—coming close at times to the likes of Earth, Wind and Fire while nodding toward the wayward harmonic tropes and samba styled journeys of George Duke’s late-seventies Epic material—filtered through a west-coast, beat makerish and acid-drenched lense. Critically, some of the best tracks on Rare Pleasure— certainly the ones that have the largest volume of listeners on Spotify such as Truth Interlude, which has over two million streams—are only sketches. They are well varnished and superbly composed pieces but eventually come up short, concentrated bursts of high-quality music that feel under-developed and end prematurely. Take Rare Pleasure IV, a track that raised my expectations for how the rest of the album might sound, a distinctly Brazilian number with a colourful, tropical eccentricity, funky and like an Azymuth acetate. Unfortunately, the rest of the album occupied a distinctly different sound world, MNDSGN tantalising us with these mirage-like fusion snippets and jazz-funk clips without ever fully committing to developing full songs with these blueprints.
Enter unsuspecting hero, Melbourne bassist Don Glori—real name Gordon Li—who’s 2022 session Welcome sees its first European issue on Bedroom Suck Records after its release in the southern hemisphere a year prior. Welcome is, for all intents and purposes, a record that fully exploits instrumental jazz to its grooviest and most cathartic excesses, a sun-ripened record which balances chopsy instrumentalists and colourful soundscapes with irrepressible grooves, infused with subcontinental rhythmical inflections. It is a release that seems genuinely unconcerned with convention, a kaleidoscopic rummage into Li’s musical mind, producing eight distinctive tracks which revel in jazz, Brazilian, soul, funk and rare groove.
To my ears, Li’s signature doesn’t sound miles away from his Californian counterparts, the main difference between them being an audible commitment to the jazzier side of the musical spectrum on Li’s part, the music sounding like a retrospective homage to the jazz-funk and fusion artists of the seventies and eighties. The album clearly relishes in the old school, delighting in references from the likes of Incognito, Roy Ayers, João Bosco, Airto Moreira and Flora Purim. Li has managed to develop on musical themes that the likes of MNDSGN briefly examined, but in higher definition, delving further into pure jazz-funk and fusion than his LA peer dared to do while finding the space to stretch out comfortably with some strong soloists. Most of the tracks on the album are full length songs as opposed to abbreviated sketches or catchy interludes—bar Cleanse and Headnoise—with a polished production aesthetic that Wayne Henderson would take pleasure in. Heady jazz-funk grooves and lashings of Latin heat are the order of the day, with the glacial cool of electric keys and warm, throbbing basslines, a pleasingly different tack to the usual fare rattled out by contemporary jazz outfits which often have a predictably techy undercurrent. Jazz-funk for the 20’s…
This type of sound is nothing new for the Melbourne scene, which over the past decade or so has firmly established itself as ground zero for some of the Antipodes’ most soulful exports (Lance Ferguson, Harvey Sutherland, 30/70, Haitus Kaiyote and ZFEX, among others). Li remarks on this phenomena, stating that Melbourne incubates an expressiveness and creative freedom that is different to other musical centres. “The beauty of living in a place like Melbourne which has no story or history of music is that there are just so many cultures and creatives doing their own thing, no one checks you. Things are a bit looser at home, people have more playing freedom. It’s a big melting pot of different cultures, it all just works. It’s a positive environment to push forward and make something fresh”. To me, this attitude is symbolic of a newer world outlook on jazz, an unrestrained expression which is takes pleasure in retrospective styles of music, while affording the musical freedom to cherry pick between styles. Melbourne musicians seem freer to experiment with what they want to play, without purists breathing down their necks. It makes for a sound that’s west of “West Coast”, oceanic, tropical and full of warmth.
Parallels to the likes of fellow countrymen ZFEX are to be expected but aren’t relevant here. The difference between both outfits is that Li’s music hasn’t explicitly been conceived for club use: ZFEX tend to play a brand of dance music with a weightier, tougher aesthetic, inspired to some degree by their immediate surroundings: Berlin, a city notorious for pneumatic techno music. Don Glori’s shimmering and spiritually tinged soundscapes are in opposition: the clubbiest number in the set Dlareme tilts more towards Latin jazz than Teutonic techno, the music providing more sonic refuge than dance floor velocity. There are shared personnel between these two groups, however, including Don Glori’s associate and engineer for the session, Lewis Moody. His presence doesn’t go unnoticed, an all-rounder’s all-rounder who has one of the most remarkable work ethics on the scene, equally at home as a synthesist, producing electronic groups, working with singer songwriters, or playing traditional jazz. The album was engineered and written in part by him, recorded in a day at Rolling Rock Studios with a cadre of local Melbourne musicians and bon vivants: Al Kennedy – drums, Don Glori – bass, keyboards, guitar, vocals, percussion & synthesizers, Javier Fredes – percussion, Lachlan Thompson – saxophone and flute, Kelly Ottaway – vibraphone, Josh Bennier – trombone, Erica Tucceri – flute, Mathew Hall, Allysha Joy, Hannah McKittrick, Merinda Dias-Jayasinha, Ruby Dargaville and Robyn Cummins on vocals.
Personal highlight Ponte sounds like a Brazilian interpretation of Roy Ayers’ Searchin’, late night music that makes you feel cool. Commodore brings the funk, with clavinets croaking underneath washy, chorus heavy electric guitar and a snappy martillo pattern on bongos—Fredes’ percussion is routinely excellent—combining in a sound that isn’t miles away from a live band interpretation of a Dego and Kaidi cut, with a pushed, latinised rhythm. This is a unique recording, no counterparts on the contemporary jazz scene, possibly Da Lata at a stretch with their brand of acoustic Brazilian jazz purveyed by Patrick Forge. With Li’s recent move to London, I expect to hear a lot more from this man as a musician and a band leader, or even as a sideman to any of the London jazz groups that will in due course have him under their employ. The progression of Don Glori will invariably be a multi-faceted one, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Buy the LP HERE
Listen HERE
