Alabaster DePlume's US tour starts August 26th!!! New Single "Naked Like Water" is out today
((( photo by Chris Almeida )))
ALABASTER DEPLUME comes with fierce grace, new music, and a big US tour
Today, on the verge of a major month-long headlining tour of the United States, Alabaster DePlume shares a new single, “Naked Like Water,” featuring Donna Thompson, drummer/vocalist and member of his touring ensemble. It’s the third and final preview from his forthcoming album Come With Fierce Grace, which is out on LP, CD, and digitally September 8th).
“Naked Like Water” was recorded late in a two-week run of sessions, with Alabaster's band deeply locked in, existing in a pure, trusting, unselfconscious zone. Donna Thompson's voice takes the lead, coaxing the group out of a kosmische-meets-spaghetti-western lockstep and into a freer, open, and unknown space. The title of the track is taken from a poem in Alabaster’s 2022 album GOLD, in which he says:
I will not be safe. I will be naked like water. It’s the best place to be. It’s the worst place to be. It’s where we are anyway. I will be there. I am there. I will be.
((( photo by Lorenza Daverio )))
About the single, Donna Thompson says “whilst we were making this music a lot of different stories and energies were swapped. I feel like this particular moment in the session was about choosing to develop our decisions both on and off the tape and it was like a summoning to say ‘Right, this is where we go next’, something that is not always an available statement when dealing in our day to day.”
ALABASTER DEPLUME on tour
US & Canada
26 Aug 2023 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Getty - Tickets
27 Aug 2023 - Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon - Tickets
29 Aug 2023 - San Diego, CA @ Whistle Stop -Tickets
30 Aug 2023 - Ojai, CA @ Deer Lodge - Tickets
1 Sep 2023 - Modesto, CA @ The Speakeasy at Greens on Tenth - Tickets
2 Sep 2023 - San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel Tickets
3 Sep 2023 - Santa Cruz, CA @ Kuumbwa Jazz Center Tickets
5 Sep 2023 - Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall - Tickets
6 Sep 2023 - Seattle, WA @ Sunset Tavern Tickets
8 Sep 2023 - Boise, ID @ Neurolux - Tickets
10 Sep 2023 - Denver, CO @ Ophelia's - Tickets
11 Sep 2023 - Boulder, CO @ Naropa University
14 Sep 2023 - Minneapolis, MN @ Walker Art Center - Tickets
15 Sep 2023 - Chicago, IL @ Co-Prosperity - Tickets
16 Sep 2023 - Chicago, IL @ Co-Prosperity - Tickets
17 Sep 2023 - Toronto, ON @ Rivoli - Tickets
18 Sep 2023 - Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz - Tickets
20 Sep 2023 - New Orleans, LA @ Music Box Village - Tickets
22 Sep 2023 - Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere Hall - Tickets
24 Sep 2023 - Accord, NY @ Woodsist Festival - Tickets
UK & Europe
19 Aug 2023 - Buckinghamshire, UK @ Stowaway - Tickets
20 Aug 2023 - Brecon Beacons, Wales @ GreenMan - Tickets
7-Nov-2023 - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club Tickets
8-Nov-2023 - Manchester, UK @ Band On The Wall Tickets
9-Nov-2023 - Nottingham, UK @ Metronome Tickets
10-Nov-2023 - London, UK @ KOKO, Pitchfork Music Festival Tickets
11-Nov-2023 - Bristol, UK @ Strange Brew Tickets
12-Nov-2023 - Brighton, UK @ Chalk Tickets
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Alabaster DePlume
Come With Fierce Grace
LP, CD, Digital album out September 8th, 2023
In order to record the compositions in his critically-acclaimed 2022 release GOLD, Alabaster DePlume instilled a culture of creativity by leading his ensembles in spontaneous composition and development. To allow them to be present, he kept the musicians constantly creating across several weeks of sessions at London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre. This process resulted in an abundance of material, much more than he could fit onto the initial double LP. After spending most of 2022 touring in support of GOLD, Alabaster spent much of early 2023 revisiting the additional material from those Total Refreshment Centre sessions – adding, subtracting, producing and arranging – resulting in an entirely new album, Come With Fierce Grace.
Come With Fierce Grace is an album made of authentic and unstipulated – yet welcomed – human interaction. It is for the most part an album of instrumentals, with exception of a few vocal features by Momoko Gill, Falle Nioke, and Donna Thompson. However the instrumentals on this album are much more embryonic and unfiltered than the lush orchestrations heard on Alabaster’s beloved 2020 album To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1.
Come With Fierce Grace is perhaps the most raw and candid portrait of Alabaster’s creative compositional process we’ve yet to hear, as he’s captured vividly in the room with his collaborators – stretching, exploring, working to deepen and expand the emotions underlying his melodic and poetic frameworks. Regarding the process, Alabaster cites a similarity to how elements in nature contribute to shared work and beauty without a collective motive – a bee’s own motives result in the delivery of pollen. As he says: “The great thing wants to happen, let us allow it to happen.”
Regarding the origin of the album’s name: On his first trip to perform in the US in March 2022, Alabaster collected messages from individuals, as he asked them if there is anything they would like him to share with his audiences. One message (from a person who preferred to remain anonymous) asked Alabaster to encourage people to “come with fierce grace.”
Deluxe *Greek Honey* color vinyl
Come With Fierce Grace is on a 140-gram vinyl LP (lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST, EU/UK orders pressed at Pallas in Germany, US orders pressed at Smashed Plastic in Chicago) inside a heavyweight reverse-board jacket, with a two-sided insert sheet and dome-patterned inner-sleeves.
And, as always, we have a limited edition color vinyl option for the first pressing only, available via our Bandcamp page only, which is 555 copies of *Greek Honey* color vinyl.
Distribution via RedEye for US, Canada, North & South America
Come With Fierce Grace is also available on Compact Disc (in a deluxe 4-panel digipack), and Classic Black Vinyl (same specs as listed above). Retailers in the United States or Canada or anywhere else inside of North, South and Central America... Please reach out to your sales rep at RedEye Worldwide if you are interested in making wholesale purchases of this album, or any other album in our catalog. Don't yet have a RedEye rep? Please just reach out to us and we'll get you hooked up!
Distribution via !K7 for Europe, UK, Australia, and ROW
On all the same formats mentioned above, this album will be distributed by our good friends at !K7 and their various territory partners in Europe, UK, Australia, and everywhere else in the world outside of North & South America.
If you are a retailer or store with questions about wholesale or are just looking to get some of our records... we'd like to make things as easy for you as possible, please do not hesitate to reach out!!!
