Tag Archives: Alabaster DePlume

Watch Alabaster DePlume’s surreal video for new single ‘Invincibility’

11 February 2025

Photo: Alexander Massek

Last month, Alabaster DePlume announced the release of a new album, A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, teasing it with the utterly beautiful and delicate lead track ‘Oh My Actual Days’. With the album release approaching, today he is offering another glimpse into the album with the deeply beautiful and moving second single ‘Invincibility’. Speaking about the meaning behind the song, DePlume says:

“When I feel my feelings (instead of escaping them) I can discover that I survive them, and that I was not destroyed by them. I can experience this as a sense of invincibility. Where I find that I am able independently to live through what I feel, I am empowered and I generate my own agency.”

DePlume is also offering up a surreal video for his newest single, made by filmmaker Niall Trask, who had this to say about it:

“Alabaster was one of the first people I met when I moved down to London; a collaboration has been a long time coming. He gave me total freedom to write on one of three tracks, and I returned his trust by choosing to euthanise him to the score of ‘Invincibility.’ On a personal level, there has been a fair share of tragedy in recent years, and finding the absurdity/humour in it all is always my go-to remedy. The treatment was ambitious, and I’m grateful to everyone who helped bring this to life (whilst putting a dog to sleep). I really tried my best to visually punctuate the sounds of a special soul!”

Watch the video below and watch out for the release of A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole on March 7th through International Anthem.

Alabaster DePlume announces new LP, A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, and shares lead single ‘Oh My Actual Days’

22 January 2025

We’re as happy as a clam about the freshly announced new album from ingenious and thought-provoking spoken word artist, bandleader, composer, saxophonist and activist Alabaster DePlume. Entitled A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, it follows last year’s EP Cremisan: Prologue To A Blade, which he recorded in Palestine, and his poetry book Looking for my value: Prologue to a blade. Arriving on March 7th through the ever wonderful International Anthem, A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole is described as an album of “songs of agency and survival and presence; of confronting life’s pains rather than trying to avoid them; of banishing escapism.”

Speaking about the album’s title, DePlume comments:

“A blade, because a blade is whole, it has forgiven itself, and because it will take a small piece of our opposite, for us to be complete. A blade has marked out these former selves on my hand, a blade made the lines that divine us and the blade is whole. A blade. While I forgive myself, and heal, and lead us in healing. We can only forgive each other once we forgive ourselves. We can only heal each other while we heal ourselves.”

Alongside the album announcement, DePlume has shared the utterly beautiful and delicate lead track ‘Oh My Actual Days’, and an accompanying video directed by artist Rebecca Salvadori. The title refers to a London colloquialism usually used to express surprise or excitement. DePlume adds:

“We can, if we choose, read this phrase as a call to the divinity of the moment we are in. Wherever we are, whatever is happening, it is our own life – a life that is made up of the time (the days – the actual days) that we spend. And we call to this – the only real thing that we have. Our time. Whatever we are experiencing it belongs to us, it is the ‘actual’ moment we are in. And it is divine. This is the introduction to the album.”

Now wrap your ears around ‘Oh My Actual Days’.

Mixtape #166

02 December 2024


A prodigious young talent and one of the stalwarts of the Belgian jazz scene, Vitja Pauwels is one of the most distinctive, versatile and daring guitar players of his generation. Besides his membership and collaborations with the likes Naïma Joris, Bombataz, Warm Bad and Lara Rosseel, Pauwels’ remarkable body of work also includes two acclaimed solo records. Sprouted from a festival invitation, Pauwels put together his “dream” band under the name Early Life Forms, comprising Frederic Leroux, Casper Van De Velde and Laurens Dierickx, and also his hero Marc Ribot. Their one-off performance was recorded and released as a self-titled record last January, daringly walking a wire between jazz, latin, cuban, rock and improv with a touch of exoticism and cinematic explorations. Needless to say we're ecstatic to kick off the month with a rad mixtape put together by Pauwels. Press play already!

Audio Player
  1. Pascal Comelade – To The Last Imaginary Solutions [Because Music]
  2. Zanmari Baré – Mary Salangann [Cobalt]
  3. Latin Playboys – Ten Believers [Slash / Warner Bros. Records]
  4. PJ Harvey – On Battleship Hill [Island Records]
  5. Espen Reinertsen – Bjørnens Sang [SusannaSonata]
  6. Gustaf Ljunggren, Skúli Sverrisson – Vestegnsromantik [April Records]
  7. Morphine – Claire [Accurate Distortion]
  8. Lhasa De Sela – De Cara a la Pared [Tôt Ou Tard / Audiogram]
  9. Tom Waits – All Stripped Down [Island Records]
  10. Ali Farka Touré with Ry Cooder – Lasidan [Hannibal Records / World Circuit]
  11. Marvin Pontiac – Bring Me Rocks [Strange & Beautiful Music]
  12. Arto Lindsay – Complicity [For Life Records / Güt]
  13. Daniel Lanois – Iceland [Anti-]
  14. Alabaster Deplume – Visit Croatia [International Anthem / Total Refreshment Centre / Lost Map]
  15. Moondog – Bird’s Lament [Columbia Masterworks / CBS]
  16. Talk Talk – Myrrhman [Polydor / Verve]

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 accompanied 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.

Alabaster DePlume shares third single ‘Naked Like Water’ feat. Donna Thompson

22 August 2023

Photo: Chris Almeida

Before embarking on 2-month tour across the US, Alabaster DePlume gave us last week another glimpse into his upcoming new LP Come With Fierce Grace. ‘Naked Like Water’ is the the third and final single lifted from the album and it features drummer and vocalist Donna Thompson, who takes the lead, as the press release describes, “coaxing the group out of a kosmische-meets-spaghetti-western lockstep and into a freer, open, and unknown space.” Speaking about the track, she commented:

“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.”

Listen to ‘Naked Like Water’ below and grab Come With Fierce Grace when it drops on September 8th through International Anthem.

Alabaster DePlume teases upcoming album with second single ‘Greek Honey Slick’ featuring Tom Skinner

27 July 2023

Photo: Chris Almeida

Following on from the tender and emotionally powerful ‘Did You Know‘, today Alabaster DePlume is bestowing us with another treat from his forthcoming album Come With Fierce Grace. Titled ‘Greek Honey Slick’, the new track features Tom Skinner and is infused with positive energy and beauty. Alabaster had this to say about it:

“Creating these things was itself a method of defeating thought, doubt, and ultimately fear, by being present in our hearts and bodies. Replacing the goal-oriented endgame demands of the mind, with an abundance of foolish playful life. I had dropped an enormous tub of organic Greek honey on my studio floor. This became an offering to the gods, to life, as we endeavoured to resist our cynical aspirations, by choosing in each moment the honest pleasure of interactive creation like big children, playing with the toys of the finest skills to which we’ve relentlessly devoted our lives. We have a responsibility to joy. If not that, then what else?”

Listen to ‘Greek Honey Slick’ below and grab the album when it’s out September 8th through International Anthem.