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Alabaster DePlume: A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week
While some listeners might baulk at the earnest spoken-word incantations, you can’t argue with DePlume’s outstanding melodies, played with tremulous vibrato
On A Blade … they’re delivered in a sprechgesang that draws equally on time-honoured hepcat declaiming, rap and performance poetry, and occasionally bring to mind not Lawrence Ferlinghetti in the company of Stan Getz, but Faithless’s late frontman Maxi Jazz. Even Invincibility shifts away from its initial singer-songwriter style into an intoxicating eddy of Middle Eastern-influenced strings that may have its roots in the period Fairbairn spent in Palestine – his 2024 EP Cremisan: Prologue to a Blade featured two tracks recorded in Bethlehem. As opener Oh My Actual Days ebbs and flows, or Fairbairn’s sax soars over a backing that views jazz through the lens of dub reggae on Salty Road Dogs Victory Anthem, it’s hard not to think that even the most cynical would feel ambushed by what they’re hearing.
Or read this on The Guardian