| Jazz |
Austin, Texas — As the Morning Sun Warms the Walls, a Sonic Landscape Unfolds.
Austin, Texas – The first rays of sunlight stream through the window, warming the office walls with sudden intensity. The fans whirl to life, a cup of coffee steams in hand, and I reach instinctively for the volume dial. Sound floods the room. And just like that, I’m elsewhere.
Just moments ago, the air outside was filled with the chatter of birds greeting the day. Yet now, here in this music, if we can even call it just “music”, they seem to return, cloaked in strange harmonies, embedded in synthesizer textures and melodic lines. What unfolds isn’t simply an ambient background; it’s a sonic concept, unapologetically avant-garde, unapologetically elitist. But we’ve seen stranger things. And this one, at least, dares to throw its poetry in your face. It doesn’t ask for permission, it demands attention. “Listen, and you will understand.”
So, obediently, we sip our coffee and we listen.
Leo Ferré once howled, “Poètes, vos papiers!”, “Poets, your papers!”. It’s time to take them out again. Because what Glen Dickson and his accomplice Bob Familiar offer isn’t just music in any conventional sense. It’s closer to poetry, cerebral, unhurried, insistent. A soundscape to be read, not simply heard. Nature threads through every measure. Forget comparisons; this is no echo of past giants. What Dickson and Familiar deliver is deeply rooted in the now, anchored in the possibilities and dissonances of the 21st century.
There’s something in the spirit of Erik Satie here, not in tone, but in intention. Like Satie, they refuse to let the listener settle. The ground shifts. Bob Familiar paints the foundational hues, a keyboardist whose approach is unburdened by tradition, led instead by pure artistic instinct. His collaboration with clarinetist Glen Dickson feels not only inevitable, but elemental.
For those unfamiliar with Dickson’s trajectory, this is not his first dance with musical experimentation. With the klezmer ensemble Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, he’s carved a path through festivals and concert halls across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Their landmark recordings, The Klezmer Nutcracker, the whimsical Pincus and the Pig in collaboration with Maurice Sendak, captured imaginations far beyond klezmer’s usual circles. The group has performed live on CBC, and even shared stages with the Philadelphia Pops. Dickson’s clarinet voice has threaded through cinema too: Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry bears his mark, as does Sidney Lumet’s A Stranger Among Us.
But this project, this latest body of work with Bob Familiar, inhabits a very different territory. Where klezmer tugs at roots and memory, this new sound pushes toward abstraction and futurism. Whether or not such music will stand the test of time is unknowable; synthesizers are often the timestamp of an era. But there’s movement in every track, an undercurrent of dance, of kinetic tension. Perhaps these are compositions less for concert halls than for installations, less to be consumed than to be experienced.
This is not easy listening. It is not meant to be. This is the terrain of experimental, improvisational music at its most unapologetic. There is no pandering here, only the raw architecture of sound, being built and dismantled before your ears. And yet, there’s structure. A dialogue emerges as the album progresses, a back-and-forth, a questioning and responding, a logic all its own.
This is a record for art lovers, for seekers, for the curious. It is not for everyone. But then again, no true art ever is. What Dickson and Familiar offer is rare: a sonic curiosity, uncompromising and beautifully defiant. A reminder, in an age of noise, that listening can still be an act of discovery.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, May 13th 2025
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Tracklist:
When Fortune Laid The Trojan Low,
Words Set Free From Doubt
Just One Inch In s Hundred Years
It Haunt me Still
Sweey seed from Bitter Fruit
Pretending she was someone else
All The Light Of Your Sphere
When The Mist Thin
And Even is Yours Mine
All compositions by Glenn Dickson and Bob Familiar
Glenn Dickson: clarinet, with Boss DD20 and Zoom G1X
Bob Familiar: Rhodes MK8-FX, Expressive-E Osmose, Singular Sound Aeros Loop Studio, Soma Laboratories Cosmos Drifting Memory Station, Chase Bliss CXM 1978
Produced by Bob Familiar & Glenn Dickson
Recorded April–December 2024