New Audio: Don Glori Shares Breezy “All Seeds”

Gordon Li is a Melbourne-born, London-based producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist, best known as Don Glori. Following the release of his acclaimed 2022 full-length debut Welcome, which was supported with a run across the Aussie festival circuit and an European Union and UK tour, Li found himself right back in the studio. But he found himself coming up short.

The Aussie-born, British-based artist explains that his forthcoming sophomore effort “Don’t Forget To Have Fun was initially recorded in mid 2022 after several months touring my first album Welcome and at a semi-tumultuous time in my life. Add in a tough 3 days in the studio – broken equipment, illness, burn out from the touring, 40 degree Australian summer heat, a bike accident, and I was left finding it quite hard to enjoy the music. All these things combined made me decide to put the DFTHF session recordings on ice indefinitely.”

After relocating to London last year, Li managed to tape into a potent creative current by taking himself out of his comfort zone and going to the basics while allowing additional room for experimentation. “I revisited the album after moving to London in May 2023. I was living in a tiny room with barely any equipment and my only income was from the slight bit of touring I was doing, which was going to towards rent and groceries. It was a good opportunity to redefine the songs from the DFTHF sessions and inject some new life into them,” Li recalls. “I had just finished touring Europe, moved to a new city, didn’t know anyone, and had all the free time in the world to experiment with wacky, zany ideas.”

“In the end I re-recorded a lot of the parts on the record in the kitchen of my Whitechapel flat while my housemates were at work. (You can hear the ambulances in the background when you isolate some of the tracks).”

This approached helped the Melbourne-born, London-based artist to distill the initial sketches into a compelling and intoxicating listening experiences, with all the tracks sharing similar subtle themes and commonalities throughout, while sonically channeling Lynda Dawn, Sade, John Carrol Kirby and others — with the album’s material featuring elements of jazz, smooth jazz, funk, soul, R&B, samba and others.

The album’s title as the rising producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist explains “. . . is a nice reminder to myself about the journey of the album. How you can chance the narrative by keeping a positive attitude, trusting the process and continually experimenting.”

Don’t Forget To Have Fun’s third and latest single “All Seeds” is a breezy tune anchored around a slinky bossa nova-meets cosmic jazz fusion-like groove featuring flowing and strummed guitar, soulful bursts of saxophone, congo-driven percussion, a strutting bass line and glistening synths paired with murmured backing vocals. The result is a composition that simultaneously recalls JOVM mainstays Mildlife and the recently departed David Sanborn and others while revealing an artist that can craft a catchy hook.

Don’t Forget To Have Fun is slated for a June 7, 2024 release through DeepMatter Records.