New Song of the Day #37: Alabaster DePlume "Invincibility"

The London-based saxophonist, poet and activist art-maker launches a new LP.

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While it’s reliably beautiful, heartening, and comforting, the artistry of Angus Fairbairn, better known as Alabaster DePlume, can also be discomfiting.

That’s one of the things I like about it.

His work can spur, and interrogate, strong feelings. I tinges of Surrealism and Dada — art movements that prioritized provocation — in his work, and you might note bits of both in the clip below, which deals with death, grief and memory. It’s heartbreaking, funny, weird, and quite beautful.

“Invincibility” is from his new LP A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole. It has liner notes by Liz Pelly, whose important new book is about how Spotify, with the cooperation of major labels, has damaged the eco-system of music-making.

She describes Alabaster DePlume as a “Mancunian singer-saxophonist and poet-philosopher,” which is correct, strictly speaking. But I see him also as a kind of gently-confrontational performance artist, akin to the way Iggy Pop or James Chance were less-gently confrontational. In performance, he tries to break the third wall (or is it the fourth? I can never get that straight) — to engage the audience in something more than the usual passive reception of art.

He also plays saxophone beautifully, with a distinctively tart, fluttering tone that can sometimes remind me of ‘70s Ethiopian jazz recordings.

I highly recommend catching Alabaster DePlume live. He’s on tour in the U.S. this month, including a show in Kingston, NY this weekend. You can learn a little more about his backstory in my posts on International Anthem Records, who release his work in the U.S.

March 15 – Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s
March 16 – New York, NY @ Le Poisson Rouge
March 18 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat
March 19 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
March 21 – Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern
March 22 – Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
March 23 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
March 25 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent
March 27 – Knoxville, TN @ Big Ears Festival
April 29 – Norwich, UK @ Norwich Arts Centre
April 30 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
May 1 – Newcastle, UK @ Gosforth Civic Hall
May 2 – Glasgow, UK @ Mono
May 3 – Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
May 6 – Bristol, UK @ Trinity Centre
May 7 – Exeter, UK @ Phoenix
May 8 – Southampton, UK @ Papillon
May 9 – London, UK @ Hackney Church
May 10 – Brighton, UK @ Concorde 2

He’s also got a new poetry book, Looking for my value: prologue to a blade, which seems to be sold out for the moment. But he may have copies to sell & sign on the road.

Below find an excerpt from Liz Pelly’s liner notes, and an early Alabaster DePlume video, with some good advice. Enjoy — Will

Album Notes by Liz Pelly:

Alabaster DePlume often asks a simple question: what do people need? In his work, at his shows, in his collaborations, the Mancunian singer-saxophonist and poet-philosopher poses this to the people around him. What are people looking for? In recent years, the same reply kept coming up: healing, healing, people need healing. But why, and what does it mean to heal, especially in a world where the very idea is often commodified and sold as a luxury? If people were coming to his music for something so mysterious, he ought to figure it out. Maybe he ought to try some healing himself.

“For a long time, I've always tried to give responsibility for my value to someone else,” DePlume told me on a recent phone call. It seemed he’d become so caught up in the work of forging connections, and thinking about the effects of his work on others, that he’d lost a sense of himself. “I was working on that,” he explained.

This experiment in healing included slowing down, reading, reflecting, and even taking up the practice of jiu-jitsu. DePlume wrote poetry, too, including the book 'Looking for my value: prologue to a blade', seventy pages of verse rooted in its title’s great search, in finding strength of self within a community, alongside meditations on the paradox of the blade. “The blade, that divides, is whole,” he writes in the introduction. “Healing is the forming of a whole, and a whole is singular, more itself, as in more one, as in more alone.” A blade could be used to attack, to shave, to sever, but it could also be used to cut oneself loose—in the process of getting free.