Alabaster DePlume
Visit Croatia

new mini EP
out today on all digital music services
!!! listen here !!!

Prominently sampled on Bon Iver’s recent track “PDLIF,” “Visit Croatia” is the title track from a new mini EP featuring two brand new tracks by Manchester-born, London-based bandleader, composer, saxophonist, activist and orator Angus Fairbairn, aka Alabaster DePlume. The title track "Visit Croatia" is taken from the album To Cy & Lee Instrumentals Vol. 1, which was released to tremendous acclaim in February (some juicy press excerpts below). The artwork for the Visit Croatia mini EP was made last week in the Alaskan wilderness by Jaimie Branch.

Check it out.

((( photo by Chris Almeida )))

“One day, I realized I was waiting for someone to give me permission to make this,” says Alabaster of “Visit Croatia.” “And at the same time, I realized – no-one could ever give me permission to make this. Not because they thought it was a bad thing. But because they didn't know what it was. I can’t give you permission to do your awesome s**t. But someone else on this earth can. And I don’t mean Cy & Lee, and I don’t mean Bernie Sanders, and I don’t mean Karen either.”

Of the mini EP’s two previously unreleased tracks, “The Good Wine” and “Black Drifts,” Alabaster writes: “They are two of the pieces prepared around the release Peach. Created in (optional, pre-lockdown) isolation, with the aim of celebrating human connections through the sheer act of yearning for them. I love music, and words and performance, but it will never be as good as people. So, if I’m going to get my work done, I must sometimes go away from people. In the middle of a heavy gigging schedule I chose to take two cassette recorders somewhere I could be unreachable, for a week. I made many things there, including these tunes. It was winter. I chopped firewood. A chinook flew over my head. I gradually came to trust myself, to be sincere.”

Listen to "The Good Wine"
& "Black Drifts" on the
Visit Croatia mini EP TODAY.

***CRITICAL ACCLAIM***
for Alabaster DePlume
& To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1

“AN ALBUM TO DELIGHT JAZZ HEADS, MODERN-CLASSICAL BUFFS, PSYCHEDELIC DRIFTERS AND CASUAL BACKGROUND LISTENERS ALIKE” – ROLLING STONE

“SEEMS TO POSSESS SECRET MAGIC POWERS” – THE BIG ISSUE

“GORGEOUS AND SOOTHING, INTIMATE AND DIRECT” – THE QUIETUS

"IN A WORLD THAT IS TROUBLED AND GOING THROUGH CHRISES OF ALL SORTS, I THINK THIS ALBUM IS THE PERFECT THERAPY FOR THE PLANET RIGHT NOW." – GILLES PETERSON, BBC 6 MUSIC

“A FORTIFYING DRAUGHT OF THE BEAUTY WE’LL ALL NEED TO GET US THROUGH
THE NEXT FEW YEARS” – RECORD COLLECTOR

"AFTER A FEW LISTENS IT JUST SOUNDS BOUNDLESS." – FADER

“ONE OF THIS YEAR’S FINEST RECORDS SO FAR. BALM TO FATIGUED MINDS AND HOPE FOR SOULS IN NEED OF STIRRING”- CLASH

((( photo by Chris Almeida )))

Alabaster DePlume

To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1

order on LP/CD/Digital
via our Bandcamp page TODAY

To Cy & Lee liner notes
by Emma Warren:

Alabaster DePlume is not doing things properly, and this makes him very happy.

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.

The record combines new compositions alongside bygone instrumentals and understated lullabies that feel like they’ve been picked from between the cracks of civilisation. These songs were collected from albums Copernicus, The Jester and Peach – under-the-radar records that preceded his critically acclaimed 2019 release The Corner of a Sphere. The new tunes feature Dan ‘Danalogue’ Leavers of The Comet Is Coming and Sarathy Korwar alongside a host of London’s finest musicians.

To Cy & Lee… has a suitably individual genesis. DePlume was working for Ordinary Lifestyles, a charity in North Manchester which supports people with disabilities to live in their own homes and to live fulfilling lives. Specifically, he was working with the titular Cy and Lee. His job was to get the guys socialising and he did this by making up songs with them. They’d make up melodies together, humming tunes in the house when they needed something calm, or when they were haring round the city in a battered car. DePlume would record these impromptu sessions in his phone, then go to the studio and use the material as starting points for songs.

He also ran music sessions for Cy, Lee and their friends. “People would focus on a central point, tuning in to one another. There are things we can’t put into words, which can be expressed with sound and music. These guys have fewer words than us, some of them have none. When we put some feelings into a music expression – that’s liberation.”

It’s a method he uses in live shows wherever possible, placing himself and the musicians in the round. The aim is to maximise the creative benefits that a community of players and listeners can bring to the music. It’s a collectivist and humanist approach to making music that sits underneath everything he does. This is music made for a reason, and those reasons include – to paraphrase some of the catchphrases he uses both on stage and in conversation – mixing people up, asking everyone to be as much themselves as they possibly can and the hardcore encouragement expressed in his most popular line, shouted back at him by audiences wherever he goes: “You’re doing very well!”

Practically, he purposefully brings together players of different skill levels and different backgrounds so they have to interact differently, placing them in unusual situations in which to record. “I wanted to destroy the idea of correct so we were playing it different ways for fun. We had a very magical time playing the tunes”. This is activism expressed through gorgeous music that breaks down barriers by encouraging that most powerful emotion: connectedness.

One source of these gorgeous instrumentals is Peach, an album that later bestowed a name upon legendary monthly sessions he’d run once he’d moved to London. The music was recorded in the middle of the room at Antwerp Mansion, around a big dinner cooked for 60 people.

“The dinner made the air vibrate in the way it did. We did it a certain way, for fun, getting people to shout out instructions – ‘make it like a hangover!’ ‘Make it like a barrel rolling down the ice!’ And we did it that way. You’ve got people eating and drinking around you and they might shout out anything. You can let go and respond.”

The two new pieces were recorded at London’s now-famous Total Refreshment Centre with Danalogue (on piano) Sarathy Korwar (drums), Chestnutt (of Snapped Ankles, on synth), Donna Thompson (voice) and James Howard (guitar). They had a day to record, and DePlume was in post-gig exhaustion. His saxophone was as battered as he was and was failing to play certain notes. “When something is broken or absent or missing, you go around it and that’s what makes it good,” he says. “Then it belongs to that moment. I want to make things that belong to the moment.”

DePlume’s politics might be more evident in vocal songs from his live repertoire when he’s reshaping advertising slogans into a call to arms or encouraging activism on “I Was Gonna Fight Fascism,” but his commitment to the cause is as palpable through the instrumentals of Cy & Lee... This is music designed to respond to what Russian revolutionary poet Mayakovsky described as a “social command.”

“I like the idea that we’re not just doing frivolous decoration. We’re doing work for society. I like to listen for what needs to be said.”

“Years ago I played a bit of sax in other people’s gigs. I realised I was waiting for someone to give me permission to do my own thing. I noticed that no-one will ever give you permission to do your awesome shit, because they don’t know what it is. It’s impossible for them to give you permission. Who gave me permission to talk to you like this? I gave myself fucking permission.”

Alabaster DePlume is not doing things properly. Hallelujah.

order the album on LP/CD/Digital
via our Bandcamp page TODAY

To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1 comes in a handsome vinyl package that hybridizes elements from all 3 labels behind the release, featuring artwork & design from Total Refreshment Centre's resident visualist Raimund Wong, with additional design by our man Craig Hansen. The 140 gram LP (pressed by Pallas in Germany) features a Lost Map compass on the B side center sticker and comes inside a Total Refreshment Centre generic inner sleeve, while the insert sheet & obi that bands around the jacket are in classic IARC style.

Order a copy via our Bandcamp page today!

Distribution via RedEye for
US, Canada, North & South America

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. 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, Japan, Australia, and ROW

This album will be distributed by our friends at K7 and their various territory partners in Europe, UK, Japan, Australia, Asia, 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!!!