Alabaster DePlume - A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole. LP [Ltd. That Was My Garden Colour Vinyl]

Alabaster DePlume - A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole. LP [Ltd. That Was My Garden Colour Vinyl]

Limited Edition 140g 'That Was My Garden' Color 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.

Album Notes by Liz Pelly:

Alabaster DePlume often asks a simple question: what do people need? In his work, at his shows, in his collaborations, the Mancunian singer-saxophonist and poet-philosopher poses this to the people around him. What are people looking for? In recent years, the same reply kept coming up: healing, healing, people need healing. But why, and what does it mean to heal, especially in a world where the very idea is often commodified and sold as a luxury? If people were coming to his music for something so mysterious, he ought to figure it out. Maybe he ought to try some healing himself.

“For a long time, I've always tried to give responsibility for my value to someone else,” DePlume told me on a recent phone call. It seemed he’d become so caught up in the work of forging connections, and thinking about the effects of his work on others, that he’d lost a sense of himself. “I was working on that,” he explained.

This experiment in healing included slowing down, reading, reflecting, and even taking up the practice of jiu-jitsu. DePlume wrote poetry, too, including the book 'Looking for my value: prologue to a blade', seventy pages of verse rooted in its title’s great search, in finding strength of self within a community, alongside meditations on the paradox of the blade. “The blade, that divides, is whole,” he writes in the introduction. “Healing is the forming of a whole, and a whole is singular, more itself, as in more one, as in more alone.” A blade could be used to attack, to shave, to sever, but it could also be used to cut oneself loose—in the process of getting free.

Released March 7, 2025

Alabaster DePlume – voice, tenor and baritone sax, acoustic and electric guitar, bass, synths
Conrad Singh – electric guitar
Donna Thompson – drums, voice, vocal arrangement for Invincibility
Hannah Miller – cello
John Ellis – piano
Macie Stewart – violin, string arrangements
Mikey Kenney – violin, voice
Momoko Gill – voice, drums, string arrangement for Form a V
Rozi Plain – bass
Ruth Goller – bass, voice

Composed and Produced by Alabaster DePlume, except Salty Road Dogs Victory Anthem, co-composed with Conrad Singh, Momoko Gill and Rozi Plain.

Recorded to analogue tape at Total Refreshment Centre
Engineered & recorded by Kristian Craig Robinson, except Invincibility, Kuzushi and Too True engineered & recorded by Alabaster DePlume
Strings engineered by Dave Vettraino
Mixed by Dilip Harris
Mastered by David Allen
Artwork by Rebecca Salvadori
Portrait photo by Chris Almeida
Design & Layout by Aaron Lowell Denton