Alabaster DePlume unveils Cremisan: Prologue To A Blade EP

15 October 2024

Photo: Sofia Lambrou

There’s wonderful news from ingenious and thought-provoking spoken word artist, bandleader, composer, saxophonist and activist Alabaster DePlume, who has just unveiled a new digital EP titled Cremisan: Prologue To A Blade, part of an upcoming larger project, Prologue To A Blade, which will also be ccompanied by his debut poetry book, Looking For My Value: Prologue To A Blade. The EP features two tracks recorded in Bethlehem, Palestine with local musicians, pianist Sami El Enani and Qanoun player Laith Albandak, and a third track, ‘Gifts Of Olive’, which references Refaat Alareer’s poem “If I Must Die”. DePlume comments:

“To set you up for what’s coming I’ve layered up these compositions in private, and with friends. It’s a prologue to what we’re bringing next. It ushers it in. I went towards things I feared, to be in the places where this music has come from. Places in the world and in myself, where dignity and sovereignty has its role in the work of healing.”

Head over to DePlume’s bandcamp to grab Cremisan: Prologue To A Blade EP, and for a taster of it, here’s the utterly compelling and beguiling opening track ‘Honeycomb’ featuring Sami El Enani.

Plantfood’s debut album, Carnivores, out now

10 October 2024

Emerging out of the jazz scene of Leeds, Plantfood are a fierce musical force. A 6-piece comprising JJ Petrie (percussion), Ruben Maric (keyboards), Joe van der Meulen (tenor saxophone), Woolley (baritone saxophone), Finn Hamilton (drums) and Woody Hayden (bass), Plantfood released last week their debut album, Carnivores. The six tracks on the album mix elements of jazz, punk, and Afro-Latin, West and North African grooves, all colliding ferociously to capture the explosive energy they are known for. The circle of life, and cycles within nature serve as Carnivores’s thematic focus, with the band “envision[ing] an apocalyptic future where the plants rise to power, taking over and consuming all around them”, as the press release describes. “The music paints these chaotic and contrasting scenes with a heavy and cataclysmic sound palette.” Carnivores also offers “moments of vulnerability, hope and spirituality as the balance of earth’s natural order is restored.”

For a taste of what’s on offer, here’s ‘Executive Decision’, one of the intoxicating tracks on the album.

Carnivores is out now through Bridge The Gap

Listen to Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp’s new single ‘Color’

10 October 2024

Following the phenomenal fist single ‘Breath‘, Swiss-based multi-national collective Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp have shared a new single called ‘Color’. The track is taken from their upcoming sixth album, Ventre Unique, and you can listen to it now.

Bibio announces new album, PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (LPII), and shares lead single ‘DINORWIC’

09 October 2024

We love Bibio and new music from him is always a very exciting and special treat. Back in 2017, the English musician and producer released Phantom Brickworks, realizing later it had became an ongoing project. Bibio is now continuing it and has announced the release of PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (LPII), arriving on November 22nd through Warp. As with the first album, it features mostly improvised music and is inspired by certain places around Britain and the charge they carry. Bibio comments:

“Human beings are highly sensitive to the atmospheres of places, which can be enhanced or dramatically altered when you learn the context of their history… echoes and voices can sometimes be heard, in some way or another. Places sometimes have things to say.”

He continues:

“When I announced the first ‘PHANTOM BRICKWORKS’ album, I discussed how places can be charged with meaning, depending on what they’d been through. That observation continues with the new album. It consists of mostly improvised music, using some of the same techniques as before as well as developing new ones that are unique to this album. Some familiar territory is revisited, both musically and in terms of the types of locations that interest me. North Wales plays a significant role, but this album reaches beyond – extending into the realms of legends, as stories passed down through generations can sometimes haunt a place more vividly.”

The eerie and atmospheric ‘DINORWIC’ is the first single to emerge from his upcoming album. The track is named after a well known former slate mine in Llanberis, Wales, and Bibio has made a video to accompany it. Watch it now.

Sarah Neufeld / Richard Reed Parry / Rebecca Foon share video for new single ‘Circular’

09 October 2024

We’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of First Sounds, the debut collaborative album that pairs three of Montreal’s finest musicians, composer and violinist Sarah Neufeld, multi-instrumentalist and musical polymath Richard Reed Parry and cellist and composer Rebecca Foon. The album will see the light of day on November 1st through Envision Records in North America and One Little Independent in the UK and the rest of the world, and the trio had already shared the utterly engrossing and otherworldly ‘Maria’ and ‘Slow New Year’, the spellbinding piece that sprouted the album. They are enticing us again with new single ‘Circular’, a track about “plaintive ghosts”, as Neufeld describes. She continues, “Three rivers of subconscious thought weaving through one another, picking up and leaving off, through a dense fog and the long reeds. We search for hidden answers in the muck and the morning air. Bows gently scrape strings, round and round and round”.

‘Circular’ is offered with a video made by Jason Last and you can watch it now.

Resavoir releases new single ‘Life Before’

08 October 2024

Last week, and in anticipation of their European tour in November/December, Resavoir released a new single called ‘Life Before’. Composed by bandleader Will Miller in collaboration with graphic designer and illustrator Crystal Zapata, ‘Life Before’ was originally commissioned by Chicago’s Public Media Institute for their publication Quarantine Times. The track is offered with a visual accompaniment made by Crystal Zapata and you can watch it below.