Sundancer
by Mr Bongo
About this track
Following his standout third album Paper Can’t Wrap Fire which landed on Mr Bongo in 2025, Melbourne/Naarm multi-instrumentalist Don Glori presents the first in a run of new singles. Picking up where he left off with the album, ‘Sundancer’ sees Don relish in the role of bandleader, exploring the breadth of his songwriting. Sitting at a cross section between jazz and soul with nods to R&B, it’s a transcendent dose of spirituality and feeling, that was heavily influenced and infused by the setting it was recorded in. Joining together with friends and fellow artists, Lyle Barton and Dougal Taylor Don wrote and recorded ‘Sundancer’ during an artist residency at the Old Carpet Factory in Hydra, Greece, in between recording sessions and meals. As he mentions “We were living in a beautiful old multi-level carpet factory with the tracking room taking up the middle floor. I had to walk through the space every morning on the way to the coffee pot, and since I was usually the first person awake, I had the giant upright Steinway piano to myself most mornings. ‘Sundancer’ was written during one of those pre-coffee, post-hangover mornings. The factory sits high up on Hydra and the window next to the piano looks over the island. On one side of the island there is a monument by Jeff Koons - a giant bronze sun which spins with the wind. The name ‘Sundancer’ was inspired by this sculpture. Musically this song is somewhere between Ahmed Jamal and Sun Ra. The Awakening meets Nuclear War. The room is as much a part of the recordings as the players. We were all in this big tiled room with high ceilings. An open sun umbrella over the drums and a pile of pillows for noise isolation. I don't think we even had headphones on for this one, just actually playing with each other. You can hear it all in the recordings.” Hearing ‘Sundancer’, you can imagine those first rays streaming through the windows catching the dust kicked up from the morning rise. Taylor’s deftly tight drumming and Barton’s expressive and ethereal piano marry with Don’s groove-heavy bass. Cosmic synth touches and the reverberating vocal refrains take the song to a far-off dimension, one where past meets present in a hazy, collective joy.