London-based multi-disciplinary artist Alabaster DePlume will release his new album, A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, on March 7 via International Anthem. The new record finds the saxophonist-songwriter-poet finding hope in the aftermath of devastation, both personal and communal. He intends to confront the ache inherent to our passage through this world and doesn’t shy away from the messy realities to which we are introduced. He gradually reveals a kaleidoscope of folk-jazz, Neo-classicism, primordial folktales, and string arrangements that would make Joni James blush.
DePlume speaks on the album’s title: “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.“
On the lead single, “Oh My Actual Days”, he blends ghostly murmurings, mournful piano tones, and melancholy strings, but the track doesn’t wallow in misery. It all begins in the darkness and then finds its own way toward personal illumination, a journey toward acceptance and healing. It’s evocative and functions as an expressive piece of sonic cinema, drawing landscapes and characters from our subconscious as we unknowingly populate these spaces with a story born from our collective experiences.
“We can, if we choose, read this phrase as a call to the divinity of the moment we are in,” explains Deplume. “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.”
The accompanying video was directed by Rebecca Salvadori, who also handled covert art duty for the new record.
Watch the clip below.
A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole is due out March 7 via International Anthem. You can pre-order the album here. Follow DePlume on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
