OUT NOW all digital music platforms: Alabaster DePlume - A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole // 2025 Tour Dates US, UK, EU
Alabaster DePlume
A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole
** OUT NOW **
ON ALL MUSIC PLATFORMS
Listen.
"Stunning...you can’t argue with DePlume’s outstanding melodies."
The Guardian
"Weaves a tapestry of sounds — spiritual jazz, folk, classical, and beyond — into a potent missive of grace."
FLOOD
“The Mancunian saxophonist and Jujitsuka dusts himself down and fires up the big strings for an album of fighting songs with healing sounds.”
The Quietus
“Conjuring chamber-based folk/ jazz collages with a bespoke philosophical twist .. assiduously pushing the boundaries.”
MOJO
“Traversing folk-jazz and elegantly-rendered orchestral suites, atmosphere and allegory, DePlume looks inward and confronts his own struggles.”
Clash
“His singing is murmured, pressurized, prayerful. His self-taught sax is his most distinctive voice, though, at times a shivering, Arabic thing like a quaking ghost, or sinuously sensual and serenely beautiful.”
UNCUT
"A simple yet beautifully executed reminder to reflect, find healing and resist vanity."
The Skinny
“Alabaster DePlume is unlike any artist of today.”
glide MAGAZINE
“DePlume är en sant originell artist i en samtid där det blivit en skriande bristvara.”
DAGEN NYHETER
"Die Zeiten sind hart und Alabaster strebt nach Heilung. Die Musik ist dabei aber nie lieblich-beliebig. In der Ruhe liegt der Krach des Aufruhrs."
radioeins
"Es geht um geistige Heilung und den Weg dorthin – den eigenen Schmerz zu akzeptieren, statt ihn zu bekämpfen. Auf dem Album folgt die Form dem Inhalt. Besser geht’s nicht."
HHV Mag
"These compositions not only represent some of the album’s most beautiful moments, but also some of Fairbairn’s most powerful work to date."
now then
“It’s a rare gift to make an instrument speak, rarer to make it communicate such a vital truth…”
Pitchfork
Alabaster DePlume
on tour
UNCUT writes: "Alabaster DePlume mesmerizes live, blowing minds with fearless absurdity and raw exposed feeling."
Alabaster DePlume's finishes his US tour this week with shows in Los Angeles and Knoxville TN @ Big Ears Festival. For both shows, DePlume's band features multi-instrumentalist Shazad Ismaily (“one of music’s most coveted collaborators,” according to The New York Times). In Los Angeles, Helen de la Rosa joins on drums, and Macie Stewart plus more TBA join at Big Ears Festival. DePlume’s band for the UK/EU tour will feature percussionist Julian Sartorius, drummer Seb Rochford, bassist Ruth Goller, and Mikey Kenney on strings. Full dates below.
March 25 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent
March 28 - 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
May 15 - Istanbul, TK @ Salon IKSV
May 16 - Warsaw, PL @ Niebo
May 17 - Berlin, DE @ XJAZZ!
May 21 - Paris, FR @ Le Petit Bain
May 22 - Lille, FR @ L'Aéronef
May 23 - Brussels, BE @ La Botanique
May 24 - Amsterdam, NL @ Zonnehuis
May 25 - Nijmegen, NL @ Doornroosje
May 26 - Rotterdam, NL @ Bird
June 1 - Torino, Italy @ Bunker (Jazz Is Dead)
June 7 - Cluj-Napoca, RO @ Jazz In The Park
July 2/5 - Roskilde, DK @ Roskilde Festival
July 4 - Sete, FR @ Worldwide
July 17 - Molde, NO @ Moldejazz
Alabaster DePlume featured in
The New Yorker
"DePlume was in town prepping for a tour in support of his new album, “A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole.” Three years ago, he started doing jujitsu whenever he could, which was never enough. (“I come back from a tour and everyone else has new belts,” he said.) The discipline gave him clarity and solace, after some personal troubles, and it figured into some of the songs on the album."
(( photo by Alexander Massek ))
...about...
A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole
In the eleven songs of A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, DePlume’s reflections on healing, dignity, and struggle are communicated through a stirring assemblage of disparate musics: ghostly and ancient folk melodies, groove-anchored maelstroms of swirling folk-jazz, elegant string arrangements that strike a midpoint between Ravel and Gainsbourg (courtesy of Macie Stewart), disembodied voices reconfiguring into the shape of a post-modern Greek chorus, noir atmosphere, and allegoric, troubadouric song.
Throughout, Alabaster’s intimate, confessional croon (a la Donovan or Devendra Banhart) and vibrato-laced tenor saxophone playing (a la Getatchew Mekurya) convey, with a startling humanistic touch, everything from dejected fragility to resolute strength.
As with all of DePlume’s work, A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole is driven by intention. In this case, a desire to interrogate the concept of healing. As DePlume shared with album essayist Pelly: “When I meet people who love my work I ask them, ‘what do people need?’ Many of them were answering ‘healing’, so I worked on that, first of all by healing myself. I found that it was an activity I could choose, and that it had a lot to do with my ownership of myself, dignity and independence. Instead of waiting for healing to ‘happen to me’ I could heal myself and own myself. That is what this album is.”
Deluxe Vinyl Package
A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole comes on a 140g vinyl LP in heavyweight jacket with photo insert sheet, IARC 2025 obi strip & poly-lined inner sleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, with lacquers cut by Daniel K @ SST.
Available on limited edition 'That Was My Garden' color vinyl for $29 USD.
Also available on classic black vinyl for $24 USD.
