thread of rapturous appreciation for Alabaster DePlume

As praised on the rolling jazz and International Anthem threads, this album is incredibly moving and gorgeous, and I would recommend it to anyone really (i.e., no need to be a "jazz" fan if that's an obstacle): https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/to-cy-lee-instrumentals-vol-1

The PR description on bandcamp is actually quite apt:

DePlume is a Manchester-born, London-based bandleader, composer, saxophonist, activist and orator. He’s a resident at the legendary London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre, a recording artist for the off-grid, Scottish Hebridean island label Lost Map, and now the latest arrival into Chicago-based International Anthem’s growing family of progressive musical explorationists. Whilst much of his music contains vocals – often whispered imperatives – this is a collection of instrumentals, drenched in feeling and recorded over four albums and eight earth years in cities across the UK.

The music of "To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1" contains naturally elegant orchestration wrapped around something visceral and primordial. Swirled inside the 11 pieces are shades of Japanese Min’yo folk, Celtic folk, the Ethio-jazz of saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya and hints of the pan-human ‘ancient music’ that sat underneath Arthur Russell’s melodies on First Thought, Best Thought. The music is filled with space, inspired, he says, by computer games and Japanese animation, particularly Joe Hisaishi’s soundtrack for Studio Ghibli’s Castle In The Sky.

I'm curious if anyone is familiar with his non-instrumental work?

Been listening to this a bunch, it even passed the Sunday morning test with my partner who generally does not enjoy saxophones

Really loving this. Thank you.

joining in to note that this is an amazing album and very necessary to me just now.

yeah this album has really helped me over the last week - just feels like an extraordinarily generous and warm album my aoty so far

it's really lovely and has taken the groupchat by storm

I'm curious if anyone is familiar with his non-instrumental work?

Saw him at a London Jazz scene thing at the Barbican and the vocals felt a bit shticky? Very different from this gorgeous instrumental record.

Visit Croatia is such an unbelievable thing. I can literally feel it in my back every time I put it on. Everything is impacted in my body by those sounds. I don't get it.

just had my mind blown when a friend pointed out that I went canvassing with alabaster deplume a few months ago without me knowing who he was. he's the most high energy board runner I have yet encountered

ha that's amazing! I have been listening to this every day like a ritual

Bought the album today on Bandcamp day but couldn't dl so far.

This is sooooo goood.

Love this album!

Got my vinyl copy in the mail yesterday! Essential quarantine listening.

"the lucky ones" so peaceful reminds me of walking around the japanese botanical garden in better times and sitting at the koi pond.

this continues to be necessary

cannot wait to have whisky story time with some friends

This album is so elegant and then there are moments that define “swooning,” it’s astonishing

it's a very beautiful album alright. Any of you lot catch Oneness by his fellow Mancunian traveller Matthew Halsall last year? That's another good one. More like predictably conventional spiritual jazzzzz in it's individual ingredients but still niiice!!

I love pretty much everything on this label, but this one has a certain ineffable something that sets it apart. It' a really unique record, and I always fall short when I try to describe it. Makaya McCraven's Universal Beings is still my favorite release on IA (truth be told it's become one of my favorite jazz records of the past ten years), but this LP seems to be appealing to a broader group of people. Then again, I may be just basing that assumption on the seemingly unanimous ILM consensus.

this album is hitting the spot for me today

ooh Oneness is quite exquisite, thank you calzino

this thread may win the award for "shortest thread with the most superlatives"

I've certainly never named a thread so aptly!

just listening today, and yes, it is loooooovely. very good sunday morning music, as Jordan mentioned upthread

this was a slow burner (and couldn't be much different than cy and lee) but it's grown on me a lot with repeat listens.
Soccer 96 is the two guys from Comet is Coming who aren't Shabaka Hutchings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hExtBucXznc

People that like Alabaster DePlume might like the latest album by Paddy Steer, who I think produced and played on Cy and Lee. It's weirdo processed electronic western slide guitar, but similarly meditative.

http://paddysteer.bandcamp.com/

thanks for that; this is outstanding!

what a weird coincidence - the Alabaster record has been bouncing among my friend circle since i discovered it on a random bandcamp browse (of IA). one of those sudden raptures - i was a bit worried when i found he was a dinky kinda white british devendra dude, but this one record is really so good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijZbNyVvTmY

The Soccer96 EP is making me like his non-instrumental side more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx1YUDVdly8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVCW6fKJsQE

wait is deplume the vocalist?

I believe Cy & Lee are instrumental versions/edits of some of his work that originally had vocals.

So possibly.

Yep he is

oh wow, that is NOT the voice i thought of when listening to cy and lee!

Haha, yeah, not what I was expecting this to sound like either.

I finally got around to listening to Tactics, and it's pretty thrilling, definitely the perfect time to revive Mark Stewart/James Chance style hectoring punk disco (which doesn't entirely capture what they're doing, but it's my immediate point of reference). Also handy to have sean's very FPable "dinky kinda white british devendra dude" descriptor so thoroughly refuted

Listening to Tactics now and it is a lot of fun.

New three song "Visit Croatia" EP with two new songs in the spirit of Cy & Lee
https://open.spotify.com/album/11t6XyMZKJ3riOPFmel6bC

Don't know if these are outtakes or a soon-to-be released follow-up, here for it either way

Lovely new track, only available for 24 hours (it's very Cy and Lee adjacent): https://alabasterdeplume.bandcamp.com/track/bean-instrumental-available-for-24hrs-only

that is nice, thank you!

it is very nice, and i'm enjoying it

is this the new model for the future? 24 hour windows of online availability? i'm being facetious, just because Laurie Anderson had an AMAZING lecture/performance the other day that streamed for 24 hours.

There was also that Phoebe Bridgers / Maggie Rogers Goo Goo Doll charity cover that was only 24 hours too.

I see it mostly with bootlegs/edits where people don't want to have to worry about needing to take them down eventually anyway

A friend sent me a link to the new Andrew Wasylyk track, Dreamt In The Current Of Leafless Winter (Featuring Alabaster DePlume), which is really lovely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTjlhPMn-7g

nice, thanks for the head's up. as usual, i accidentally started playing the song both in my ilx tab and a separate youtube tab, and it took me 2 minutes to notice, ha!

oh i like him too!

new album in April: https://alabasterdeplume.bandcamp.com/album/gold-go-forward-in-the-courage-of-your-love

some exciting names in the credits: Falle Nioke (!), Sarathy Korwar, the Soccer96 guys

for me, the issue is that Cy + Lee is borderline bland/ wallpapery: what renders it sublime is its restraint and space, its willingness to say -less-

so when deplume's in there with repetitive mantras and banal lyrics, none of the lift-off appears: and without that grace, i'm confronted by the worst aspects of the instrumentals (their vapid pleasantness).

yeah if you weren't all in on Cy & Lee this is certainly not going to convince

i'm really surprised sam gendel and sam wilkes haven't been mentioned on this thread.

those of you who are into the instrumentals should check out Music for Saxophone & Bass Guitar.

if you like that, just start exploring sam gendel. his discography is bewilderingly large and consistently great

definitely agree about Sam Gendel. Feels like a lot of his stuff works similar angles to some of the recent IA stuff, as well as that also-slept-on Pino Palladino and Blake Mills album from last year

ilm feels kinda dead right now

I think I mentioned this a few weeks back on the Burial thread. Hard to imagine the ILX of 5+ years ago not keeping a thread about an excellent new Burial release at the top of the New Answers page for weeks. I acknowledge that this may also be my most "it's the children that are wrong" post ever.

Maybe this new Alabaster album is being discussed in the general International Anthem thread?

I don't mean to be facile in dismissing this album merely because of the vocals but I listened to about a third of it and decided I definitely don't need to own it. For comparison's sake, after hearing the first few minutes of Cy and Lee I was rushing to Bandcamp to buy it

It's a weird record, but I feel it was a tough spot creatively to follow up Cy & Lee. On the one hand he's not really a jazz saxophonist, in terms of improvising with a band. But he is great at using his quaver-y style that sounds more like a Japanese flute, and making those beautiful folky instrumentals. But he also couldn't make the same record again, and I assume he doesn't want to either. So he kind of ends up trying to have it all (introducing his vocal/spoken word element, sometimes over Cy & Lee type tracks and sometimes over more live band-ish grooves), and I'll bet most are going to playlist out their favorite tracks?

Personally I wish he would stick to instrumentals, and then start a post-punk band a la that Soccer96 EP. His vocals and lyrics sound soooo much better at higher volume in that context.

xp

I get that this is a weird take but Cy & Lee sounded to me like an easy listening version of Mulatu Astatke etc. Whereas the singing on Gold adds a specific and authentic point of view (even though it is at times ridiculous and a greeting-card version of anti-capitalist), and a spiky "off" flavor that removes it gently from wallpaper music. The voice calls up Donovan, yes, and at times Leonard Cohen—one song even seems to reference "You Know Who I Am;" I even hear something of the more hippie-spoken aspects of late Moss Icon (maybe that's too far ha ha). And the music ranges a lot more widely. It's not just "chill instrumentals," there's at times a clattery dubby feel, like later Can or some On-U Sound instrumental.

I get that, and it probably would have felt like pandering to make Cy & Lee pt 2. Maybe my issue is that he tries to combine the other parts of his musical personality with that sound and have it both ways? It sounds like three albums put together and maybe it would have been better if he had just done something totally different, idk.

His insistence on a raw, unpracticed quality is also palpable here and sort of punk in a Raincoats-like way(?); + the map-diagram included inside the record — how to shape these sessions — is striking, weird gesamtkunstwerk-y shit

Anyway, where Cy & Lee felt soapy and bland to me, I like this.

xp
I haven't worked out my own reference points, but yr last sentence (Freeze's) is def what I was trying to get at with "new musical directions"—this is a fuller album, which might be what sean was objecting to to some degree, but I think there's a lot of value in the additions to the palette.

The "wallpaper" and "pleasant" verdicts on C&L are genuinely odd to me (i.e., not "ur wrong" more just "idgi"), but I don't feel like debating it. I agree with Jordan that following that album up would be a challenge regardless, and making a double album almost inherently screams "trying to have it all."

Do I have this wrong: I thought Cy & Lee was a compilation, that International Anthem selected instrumental tracks from a set of existing recordings. So it's not exactly a coherent statement as such except by the label who saw a lane for a vocal-free DePlume LP.

No, I think that is correct, but it was received as an album which I think is what Jordan had in mind(?). I almost said the "problem" with Gold isn't his voice, it's that he needs an editor, but I'm not sure I actually think that.

One of those new colors on the palette I really love is the steel/slide guitar

BTW by describing Cy & Lee as wallpaper I'm not trying to diminish anyone else's liking of it, more trying to reason out my own responses to it. I haven't gone back to it, I might hear it differently post-Gold.

just listened to this album and liked it a whole lot more than I was expecting after the first few tracks, where the vocals felt way too dominant - and I didn’t even listen to the lyrics. (as for comparisons, I was veering between Leonard Cohen and Richard Fairbrass: not good)
but I kept listening, because the music was wonderful a lot of the time. by the time I got to “Who Is A Fool” I even loved a track *because* of its vocal. the closing track is a beauty - an instrumental one.

ilm feels kinda dead right now

xxp yeah, wallpaper isn't always a bad thing---think that was a take on Vivaldi even at his (lifetime) peak, and I liked the sunset-climbing-the-wallpaper interludes on Live-Evil, softening me up for return of the onslaughts. Cy & Lee had me thinking of primo John Martyn textures x grooves, so twee vocals would not be unexpected, and can always listen around them probably (although I haven't tried w DePlume yet); that worked OK w Donovan, and his acknowledged (also obvious) influence, Bert Jansch.

It's not an exact match but the combination of his lyrics and singing reminds me of NoHo Hank from "Barry."

lol

For years I was put off Robert Wyatt's work by his voice and the whimsy, both of which I now love; I'm hoping it's the same with AdP, bcs I think there's some great stuff here.

I can't stand this stuff

I think maybe it's not an accident that the "album" that put him into broader awareness was a compilation of instrumental work. I really dig the instrumental stuff--his breathy, fragile playing style and melodic sensibility really work for me.

But I can't get into the vocal pieces, just immediately turned off. It's a shame as it seems that's what he considers his main work, and it must chafe that people loved his non-vocal work so much...

^ Where I'm at, too

new track is rather nice and Momoko Gill is the only singer on it: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/come-with-fierce-grace

New album sounds great so far. In parts it reminds me most of John Lurie's music, especially the new Lounge Lizards stuff for the HBO show.

Was not familiar with Momoko Gill before but damn she's multi-talented

he's playing out in my neck of the woods next week ... should I go????

thanks for mentioning that, I hadn't noticed he's coming to Montreal real soon (i.e., yeah I'd go!)

I agree with Jordan, this new one is very good. I'm halfway through and there's only been one brief bit of AdP singing, and yet it's not much like Cy & Lee. Despite my posts upthread I didn't stick with GOLD at all; this is immediately much more compelling.

i went! it was awesome ... kind of indescribable. his band (bassist + drummer, both on backup vocals) was amazing.

way more jazz-metal than i expected!

still not quite sure i'm picking up what this guy's putting down... this was more amanda palmer-meets-devendra banhart than i would have liked. kinda the elfin mirror-image of a band like Caroline? but the band was tight as hell - Ruth Goller and Donna Thompson just dazzling and heavy

It is kinda funny that he has this coffeehouse poet side that he was doing before he had a hit with his instrumental side, and he keeps trying to work it in to everybody's confusion.

xp
yeah this was unexpected and imo unique. as you both said the band were fantastic. I can hear jazz-metal, but I was thinking more about no wave, various uk post-punks, even distantly Morphine in terms of how much power they got out of that set-up. Though tbh I can't really think of anything else I've seen that had the same breadth of style from just 3 people.

For me, the banhart vibe (I've never actually listened to AP) that was ultimately fatally off-putting on GOLD was laced with so much more self-aware humour and irony live, while still being deeply sincere, that I think I should revisit that album with this more sweary & playful AdP in mind. I mean, yeah sometimes his vocal stuff was a little precious-hippie (but never genteel), but other times he seemed closer to idk Mark Stewart or Johnny Rotten or something. And as spiritual-love-and-kindness as some of his messages are, he also obviously has more of a concrete/activist-y politics, which I don't recall ever seeing in DB.

Also endearing to see how much people loved it/him. My friend got too hot and had to duck out during the last song (an a capella "I Was Gonna Fight Fascism"; they also did "Buy It" from that EP, which I thought was interesting, maybe due to the similarity of the trio set-up & the post-punk-ish sound in general?) and he said everyone walking out was talking about how it wasn't what they were expecting.

Go see him if you get the chance imo

ha, yeah, in a live setting, I thought his vocal stuff was like if johnny rotten tried to turn into jonathan richman. it worked for me!

Interesting, yeah I'd love it if he leaned into the post-punk/Soccer96 EP sound for the vocal tracks rather than integrating it into the more tranquil music.

Was playing this at the weekend - sure it features Deplume - and had one of those "This sounds so good - it's the most I've ever enjoyed it and can't believe I will ever enjoy it this much again" moments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id1K8TUSIhM

he played a pretty sweet set sunday in the rain. serious daevid allen solo album vibes

no discussion of the new album at all? much less shouting this time around and more of the lovely woodwind work that drew me to him in the first place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLudH1OqYgY

I've only managed to listen to it once so far, but I thought it was quite beautiful.

"no discussion" — frankly, it's been unpleasant talking about him on ilx for a while. maybe it will get better now that the vocal-haters likely won't bother, and he's moved far enough away from "jazz" that anyone complaining about this being ~spiritual jazz~ will sound boneheaded.

that said, I think genre is an interesting way to think about his music. I heard traces of some of the more outlying strands of late 90s/early 00s indie in this one; everything from Rachel's to Dirty Three to, less outlying, Devendra Banhart

"international anthem" is kind of a genre unto itself these days

I would have resisted that reading at one point, but I agree and in fact was in a record store the other day with an IA section lol and putting out the next Tortoise kind of clinches it. recreating the late 90s indie label = genre ethos (Drag City, Kranky, Thrill Jockey, etc) definitely feels targeted at my exact demographic.

the non-notated, tasteful, jazzy but not exactly jazz corner

There was a little New Yorker profile of him that was heavy on the quirk (doing Brazilian jiu jitsu, wearing a keffiyeh, having hand tattoos representing the versions of himself he used to be).

tbf I get finding this guy annoying on the surface (though in my world of left people, wearing a keffiyeh is the opposite of quirky), but seeing him live shifted my view of his starry-eyed hippie persona because I found him immensely entertaining

the non-notated, tasteful, jazzy but not exactly jazz corner

― gestures broadly at...everything (voodoo chili), Thursday, April 3, 2025 11:32 AM (four hours ago)

yeah, I feel like IA has reinvented a 20s version of (US) post-rock. not my favorite genre name and wouldn't want to revive the term, but it's a good thing imo

the non-notated, tasteful, jazzy but not exactly jazz corner

thank you for articulating exactly why I don't like much of this stuff

I guess, aside from the handful of veterans like William Parker carrying the torch, the cultural cache for free jazz / fire music is at an all time low. Would love to hear some younger players who are more influenced by David S. Ware or Charles Gayle or Cecil Taylor than Thundercat, because I am sure they exist

Zoh Amba will fit that bill

Thanks for that Zoh Amba! I just listened to her 2023 album a couple times and love it. There are parts where she plays a slower, more syrupy, Albert Ayler type vibrato that I love, but she's definitely got her own thing going on.

Sort of blows my mind that she is only 24 years old!

I’m not a fan but glad you like it!

I wouldn't mind more fiery stuff from IA again, seems like that end of things has faded away quite a bit. Part of that is Branch passing away, Moor Mother moving on to experiment with genres further away from Intl Anthem style and other artists evolving, but I miss some of that.

It's probably not the best word, but even though I enjoy a lot of it, they've been leaning to much into "restrained" stuff.