International Anthem
The Eleventh Year
Alabaster DePlume
To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol 1
IA11 Edition
To Cy and Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1 is a collection of Mancunian poet, singer, saxophonist and composer Alabaster DePlume’s simple and serenely intimate wordless adventures in melodic ennui. The collection properly introduced the world to a previously under-exposed, undeniably deep dimension of DePlume who, at the time of the its release, was most known to his followers for his music with words, his poetry, and his prowess as an impassioned orator. His performances (especially those that were part of his monthly Peach residency at Total Refreshment Centre in London) were becoming legendary for blurring the boundaries between secular sermon, theatrical monologue and song, as he turned audiences into experimental large ensembles and lead full-throated shout-a-longs to tunes like “Is It Enough” and “Be Nice To People” (both from his 2019 Lost Map album The Corner of a Sphere). The instrumental pieces that quietly buffered the big vocal moments of his recorded catalog, to that point, had mostly lived, quietly, in those buffers.
We’re not really sure what inspired DePlume to gather all of his recorded instrumentals, add a couple new ones, and invite International Anthem to collaborate on the campaign (we had only recently been getting to know him a little deeper, after our second trip to Total Refreshment Centre in the fall of 2018 when we recorded jaimie branch’s FLY or DIE II: bird dogs of paradise). But what we do know is, not long after To Cy & Lee’s February 2020 release and the subsequent arrival of a global pandemic, those recordings went very far, very fast, taking on a new life as stay-at-home hits — the quiet catharsis we didn’t know we needed in the face of rapidly unfolding confusion, fear, and isolation. As the people of the world found themselves inside their small rooms, they began to search for smaller, more intentional sounds to fill them. These instrumentals carried the healing qualities we were after then, and still seek now. As we cite on the obi strip, the music is an antidote with seemingly ancient sonic characteristics, and a unique ability to embrace the core of our very being.
To Cy & Lee was also the first document of an ongoing collaboration between DePlume and International Anthem, which has already yielded the albums GOLD (2022), Come With Fierce Grace (2023), and A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole (2025), in addition to sundry singles and EPs. The depth of partnership between DePlume and our crew that has developed since To Cy & Lee, coupled with the endlessly quenching spiritual comforts the album continues to provide, makes it an absolute essential of the International Anthem catalog and a proud choice for the final three of the IA11 series.
The IA11 Edition of To Cy and Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1 comes on classic black 140-gram vinyl LP inside a heavyweight reverse-board jacket, with a 12-page 11x11" insert booklet (including previously-unpublished photos and new liner notes by DePlume himself), IARC 2025 obi strip and printed poly-lined printed inner-sleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, with new lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST.
Out November 18, 2025
Available on LP/Digital via our Bandcamp page
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Composed by Alabaster DePlume.
Performed by Alabaster DePlume – vocal, tenor sax, guitar; Ríoghnach Connolly – voice, flute; Jess Connor – voice; Ellis Davies – electric guitar; John Ellis – pianette, clavinette, piano; Jessica Macdonald – cello; Hannah Miller – cello; Bi Roxby – voice; Paddy Steer – percussion, bass pedals; Leon Boydon – acoustic guitar; Daniel Inzani – piano; Beth Porter – cello; Lorenzo Prati – tenor sax; Dan Truen – drums; Will Calderbank – cello; Lorien Edwards – bass guitar; Philip Howley – drums, percussion; Mikey Kenney – violin; Pascal Makonese – m’bira; Kirsty McGee – bass flute; Tim Vincent Smith – violin; Rick Weedon – drums, percussion; Chestnutt – synth; Danalogue – piano, voice; James Howard – electric guitar; Sarathy Korwar – drums; Donna Thompson – voice.
Arranged by Alabaster DePlume, with Bi Roxby (track 3), Ellis Davies (track 11), and Danalogue (track 7).
Tracks 1, 3, 8 & 11 from "Copernicus" (2012) recorded at Limefield Studios and Madwaltz; produced & engineered by Paddy Steer and John Ellis; mixed by Paddy Steer.
Track 9 from "The Jester" (2013) recorded in Bristol; produced by Alabaster DePlume and Daniel Inzani with Mark Dressler; mixed & engineered by Mark Dressler.
Tracks 4, 5, 6 & 10 from "Peach" (2015) recorded at Limefield Studios, Madwaltz, Antwerp Mansion and Total Refreshment Centre; produced by Alabaster DePlume; engineered by Paddy Steer, John Ellis and Karl Sveinsson; mixed by Paddy Steer.
Tracks 2 & 7 (2019) recorded at Total Refreshment Centre; produced by Alabaster DePlume; mixed & engineered by Kristian Craig Robinson.Tracks 12 & 13 (digital-only bonus tracks) produced, performed and recorded by Alabaster DePlume, circa 2013.
Album Mastered by David Allen (based on original tape masters of "Copernicus" by George Atkins at 80 Hertz).
Cover Art, Design & Layout by Raimund Wong.
Insert Design by Craig Hansen.
IA11 Design by Aaron Lowell Denton.
Photography by Christina Almeida.
Notes on the music of
To Cy & Lee:
Instrumentals Vol. 1
2010-2019
Liner Notes by Alabaster DePlume
My many allies, who I only had dreamed of, back when I wrote to you of my ‘original collaborators’ Cy & Lee. When, unbidden, I offered this music up in case you’d soon find it helpful in “this world of demands, threats and madness”, I couldn’t have pictured today. Every one of you who has come to me in hidden-DM-requests, dreams or in person to tell me “this music got me through lockdown” (or many other catastrophe), you may think I’m failing to receive, when I tell you that was also you. You got yourself through that moment of the impossible, and this music is yours as much as mine, precisely because of that. You may think I’m failing to receive when I tell you so, but truly I am receiving you into my life, by seeing this work as shared. It’s made of what resonates between us, and as such, your love of it is the substance of its value. Thank you for loving this music, your love of this music got me through lockdown. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I did not have your love of this music in my life.
Analogue double-exposure portrait by Paul Blakemore and Karen Dews taken soon after the first album.
The launch night of my first album Copernicus, 27th May 2012, that changed my life and that I still commemorate each year.The strings we see vertically hanging are Elle Brotherhood’s installation, using helium balloons attached above with origami boats that house an LED hanging beneath, suspended just above the ground.The main result of this installation was the effect of everyone having to work together and connect, in creating it.
Do you know that it’s called Visit Croatia because my friend said “it sounds like holiday advert music, you should call it Visit Croatia". In a half-humour act of stubbornness, defiance and enjoyment of the absurd, I took him up on his suggestion. “We will see”. At the time I made it, the idea that my music could ever have a legitimate audience was remote for me, and absurd for nearly anyone else.
That song’s melody arrived with me as I was walking with Cy and Lee to Cy’s car, from their house. I remember it precisely. It was time to drive somewhere, maybe their friend Pat’s house, maybe one of the many music sessions that the team and I supported them to run. Maybe the pub, maybe Tuesday club. When I started that job I thought I was just “getting a job” because I “have to make money” in order to “live”. No-one could have told me that it would teach me profound lessons about leadership, performance and music, and that it would one day connect me with you, the person who is reading these words somewhere today.
Program for the Copernicus launch.
When I collected these instrumentals for you I felt embarrassed – who do I think I am, making a collection of my own music, I’m not Elton John and this is not exactly my greatest hits now is it. One of the two fresh tunes I recorded for it is What’s Missing. I recorded it between shows, when I should’ve been getting my saxophone fixed, and going to the dentist. I’d been working on electing a socialist prime minister with an upswell of popular hope, in spite of the propaganda of right wing legacy media. I was asking myself what’s missing in our society, as I memorised the final speech of Salvadore Allende.
The song of the foundling I remember clearly banging the steering wheel of the car, to the beat of this tune, singing it out loud, as we drove around, me Cy and Lee, back in 2010 or whenever. Lee especially knew if you were not bothered, if you were not quite there. He could tell. To hang out with Lee you had to honestly be present, or he would not engage in anything. He could sniff out pretenders. He could do the same thing with tunes. He knew if the tunes were not really bothered to be there with him. And if he sensed that, he’d say “I wanna go home now Gus”. With this tune especially he was happy to be out driving, going where we were going.
This is me leading the session where we recorded the full band live onto tape in the middle of an audience eating a big meal, in the former Belgian Embassy, a squat-style venue called Antwerp Mansion.
Sam Buckley prepares the food for the Antwerp Mansion full band recording session in the middle of a curated audience, which resulted in material included on Peach.
I was once very close with someone and we were lucky enough to make a tradition of reading to each other in a small den, with a tiny bit of single malt, the most we could afford, as we eeked out an existence. Deeply hungry. We read Dostoevsky, and the Moomins. Though the melody visited me in Sheffield it was so sweet I dedicated it to the tender sharing of a safe moment hidden away in the tradition of Whisky Story Time.
Setting up for the aforementioned Antwerp Mansion meal session, we see TimVincent Smith (fiddle), Kirsty McGee (bass flute) and behind me Louis Barabbas himself on the throne.
In 2013 still working with Cy and Lee I visited Bristol to collaborate with Dan Inzani on my 2nd album The Jester. Budgetless in his house we worked with his team, and cooked up a project called The Jester. His crew are totally devoted to analogue and vintage methods and equipment (as I am too, to an extent). The demands of these methods put an additional strain on the already present demands of un-funded musicians, to the point where we are liberated from artifice or falsity, because there is no chance to ’’try’ to do anything. The results will choose themselves. We recorded an album together, and in that album was a song called ‘Not My Ask’. For many years the same house we recorded in, was storeroom for the unsold ‘The Jester’ vinyls. They took up a lot of space, it was quite embarrassing. Today, of course, they can only be seen on rare vinyl websites, selling for figures that would’ve fed us for weeks, when we made them.
This is the room in Sheffield where I lived in isolation for a week, without running water, and perpetual rain outside. I slept on the least mouldy of the 13 sofas stacked on the opposite side of the room.A project in the next room along blasted a constant grinding sound daily between 9am and 5pm. In this room I wrote my song ‘Tell Me’, and worked on other material for The Jester.
Paddy Steer in his famous attic studio. In the foreground one of his many home built synthesizers. His production, and punk attitude liberated my practice, purely by example.
Mikey Kenney in John Ellis’ ballroom recording studio Limefield, in Middleton. We are recording ‘If You’re Sure You Want To’, and ‘I Feel Good’, with Paddy Steer.
The splitting, breaking sound, at the end of ‘If You’re Sure You Want To’, is a small piece of wood. Every choice is destructive, because whatever we choose to do, we did not do the other thing – we destroyed a world in which it happened. All we can do is be present with the world we chose, the world we are in. I split that wood in my hands, recording with my great ally and teacher Paddy Steer, in his attic recording studio. I was receiving a choice someone had made, and accepting their choice, and all that would come with it. I received it – as I still do today – openly.
John Ellis himself in foreground, and Paddy Steer, at John’s recording studio, the same session as mentioned above with Mikey, who was stationed just to the right of this picture, on the other side of a suit of armour.
Still now, as I bring this music around the world, I feel unqualified, unauthorised, to do this. And I make for myself my own qualification. When I engineered ‘Lucky Ones’ myself (because there was no time to get a proper engineer in) I felt like it could never be good enough. ‘Professional’ enough. But I did it, and you wanted it, and here we are. Why am I mentioning this? In case there is anything that you, today, feel unqualified to do, and yet there are people out there who need you to do it anyway – to create your own qualification. My great friend Danalogue created the intro section to this song, in fact. He didn’t offer to do it – he purely did it, because he felt it. And since he did it so boldly, we are liberated to feel it too.
With Danalogue in London, around the recording of ‘The Lucky Ones’
Back where this music originally came from, I was working as a care support worker with adults with learning difficulties, and I was playing as an accompanist in other peoples’ bands. I would perform in their sessions. I was often perplexed by the way they would do things. Baffled, confounded, frustrated. Eventually I faced myself: Gus, if you really know how to do it properly, you’d better do it then, hadn’t you? So I did some extra shifts and I saved up, and booked some sessions with John Ellis at his beautiful studio. I got in the best people, Hannah Miller, Paddy Steer, the names are on the sleeve – I owe every one of those unique and exceptional players my lifelong gratitude for their playing. I had no chance, I mean there was no sense in believing in this strange, soft music. It was not trendy, I was an odd person to talk to. Certainly I had no backing, and no-one would book such a show if it existed. But I did it to enjoy it. To love it. I create because I must. We recorded Visit Croatia, Why Buzzardman Why, I Hope, and Dear Soul. There in that session I had access to an abundance, that I do not have now. It was a freedom from opportunity. A freedom of motive. No-one involved had any career-based or real financial reason to be making those things with me. And I believe you can hear this, in the music.
Whoever you are, who is reading this, you may have the thing that will save the hearts and souls and lives of some people in this world, one day. We will never ask you for what you truly have – but that’s not because we don’t want it. It’s because we don’t know what it is. Do it, now, while we are not asking for it. We can’t ask you, until you do.
This is part of the crowd-funding campaign we did to create The Jester.The carpet we see behind me is the floor of the front room of Cy and Lee’s house.
Photo by Charlie Weinmann
Alabaster DePlume
About
Gus Fairbairn, aka Alabaster DePlume, has a pocketful of phrases that he uses all the time whether he’s walking down the street or holding court with musicians and an audience. For a long time the Mancunian would tell anyone who’d listen that they were doing very well. More recently, it’s another phrase which has a similar effect and which belies his unwavering commitment to personal vulnerability and collective politics: “Don’t forget you’re precious.”
International Anthem
The Eleventh Year
On December 2nd, 2024, we marked the ten-year anniversary of our first release.
With a full decade under our belt – ten years of commitment to a growing community of artists, and our original mission statement ("to vitalize demand for boundary defying music," among other things) – we've spent a lot of time thinking about how we'd like to celebrate this milestone. What we keep coming back to is: desire to use this opportunity to revisit and revivify music and memories from our first decade; but keeping true to our ethos of always looking forward, all the way.
In that spirit, across 2025, we'll be rolling out a series of releases and events under the IA11 banner. Celebrating our eleventh year. Doing our best to retell essential, foundational stories from our past, while keeping our hearts and minds fixed on the present. Trying to establish new standards that can help carry our mission through another decade of work – and hopefully more.
Stay tuned for releases and news.