Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone 🔊 (BBC 6 Music)

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Dust In The Wind - Kansas

Alabaster DePlume 
“Peach”
Debt Records
2nd Oct 2015

A peach is a sweet and soft and good thing with a stone in the middle, and this is an album about being a person. Smartphones, analogue tape, valve microphones, computers, group games and a grand banquet were used to create this collection of songs, tunes and monologues, that use a series of contradictions to talk about being alive. 

Long-term collaborators John Ellis (piano) and Paddy Steer (percussion, bass, lapsteel, synth) join Angus Fairbairn (vocal, tenor sax) along with eleven other musicians and nearly a hundred other voices in presenting sounds likened to Ethiopian jazz and Japanese folk music. Scripts and vocal delivery evoke Ivor Cutler, Emo Philips and Leonard Cohen, for this combination of theatre, live-captured music, songs, humour and philosophy.

It is a unique collection, made by unusual means designed around the artistry and conveyance of its many contributors. Created over three years in London and Manchester, it’ll be celebrated in those two towns on the dates below, following its vinyl and digital release on Manchester label Debt Records, on 28th September 2015.

A composer, musician and performer, Alabaster DePlume (Angus Fairbairn) has toured northern Europe, appeared on UK national radio and developed theatre for Bram Stoker Festival in Dublin. His many combined arts projects are based around music, and personal inclusion. In this, his third album, he has employed as many voices as he can, in conveying a method of survival he’s been taught, he says, by everyone he’s met.

Hope grows naturally, like a
dandelion between the bricks.
I feel good…

Manchester launch: 4th October at The Wonder Inn 
London launch: 31st October at The Total Refreshment Centre, Dalston

Personnel:
Will Calderbank – cello
Rioghnach Connolly – flute 
Ellis Davies – electric guitar
Lorien Edwards – bass guitar
John Ellis – pianette, clavinette, piano
Leonie Evans – backing
Angus Fairbairn – vocal, tenor sax, acoustic guitar, yanquin dulcimer, synths
Dominie Hooper – backing 
Philip Howley – drums, percussion
Mikey Kenney – violin 
Pascal Makonese – m’bira
Kirsty McGee – bass flute
Tim Vincent Smith – violin
Paddy Steer – drums, percussion, bass guitar, double bass, synths
Rick Weedon – drums, percussion 
With selected vocal delivery from – Rioghnagh Connolly, Ellis Davies, Julia Foster, Katarzina Jablonska, Sally Jenkinson, Kasia Wlaszczyk, Oliver Conway. 
And with a chorus of attendees of the ‘Excuse Me’ studio feast, 9th September 2014, Antwerp Mansion. Meal by Samuel Buckley.

Engineered by Paddy Steer, John Ellis and Karl Sveinsson. Recorded at Limefield Studios Middleton, Madwaltz Levenshulme, Antwerp Mansion Rusholme and the Total Refreshment Centre Dalston, with additional field recordings at various locations. 
Mastered by George Atkins at 80 Hertz.
Artwork by Liz Greenfield
All songs and scripts written by A. Fairbairn. 

14 - Strange

The Collection: The Best of the Early Years

Another Great Divide

Slow Dazzle

Heartbreak Hotel

Promise Of Love

Hard to Find

Abichu Nega Nega

Animalia

Mansions of Millions of Years

An Ode To Escapism

Queen Bee

Captivating, ethereal and majestic, Mammal Hands (saxophonist Jordan Smart, pianist Nick Smart and drummer and percussionist Jesse Barrett) has carved out a refreshingly original sound from a disparate array of influences. Drawing on their love of electronic, contemporary classical, world, folk and jazz music, Mammal Hands take in influences including Pharoah Sanders, Gétachèw Mekurya, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Sirishkumar Manji.

Formed in Norwich in 2012, one of Britain’s most isolated and most easterly cities, they have forged their own path away from the musical mainstream and their unique sound grew out of long improvised rehearsals. All three members contribute equally to the writing process: one that favours the creation of a powerful group dynamic over individual solos. Their records are entrancing and beautiful affairs, while their hypnotic live shows have seen them hailed as one of the most exciting bands in Europe as they push their unique line-up to the outer limits of its possibilities.

Mammal hands fourth album Captured Spirits is available on Gondwana Records.

Mansions of Millions of Years

Mammal Hands

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