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. 

Eventually

Black Suzie

Related tracks