IA11 Edition of ALABASTER DEPLUME's To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1 OUT NOW on digital music platforms with two new bonus tracks
Alabaster DePlume
To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1
(IA11 Edition)
OUT NOW all digital music platforms
(vinyl LP in stores December 5th)
Today we are very happy to digitally release the IA11 Edition of Alabaster DePlume's To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1. This expanded edition includes the addition of two digital-only bonus tracks "Every Time" and "You Already Know," which were recorded by DePlume circa 2013, concurrently with some of the pieces on the original album.
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 album's 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 led full-throated shout-alongs 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 IARC, 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 editions of the IA11 series.
In record stores worldwide on December 5th, 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 inner sleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, with new lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST.
IA11 Liner Notes
by Alabaster DePlume
Along with today's digital release, we've published the new liner notes for the IA11 Edition of To Cy and Lee, which were written by DePlume himself, on our website. An excerpt:
"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."
(( photo by Andrea Terzuoli ))
Alabaster DePlume
on tour
Alabaster DePlume continues to tour in support of his recently-released, critically-acclaimed album A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole.
January 28, 2026 – Metz, France @ La Trinitaires
January 29, 2026 – Rouen, France @ Le 106
February 1, 2026 - Brest, France @ La Vauban
February 18, 2026 - Bern, Switzerland @ Bee-Flat
February 19, 2026 - Zurich, Switzerland @ Moods
Alabaster DePlume
A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole
LP/CD/Digi album
out March 7th, 2025
"Stunning...you can’t argue with DePlume’s outstanding melodies."
The Guardian
"Weaves a tapestry of sounds — spiritual jazz, folk, classical, and beyond — into a potent missive of grace."
FLOOD
“The Mancunian saxophonist and Jujitsuka dusts himself down and fires up the big strings for an album of fighting songs with healing sounds.”
The Quietus
“Conjuring chamber-based folk/ jazz collages with a bespoke philosophical twist .. assiduously pushing the boundaries.”
MOJO
“Traversing folk-jazz and elegantly-rendered orchestral suites, atmosphere and allegory, DePlume looks inward and confronts his own struggles.”
Clash
“His singing is murmured, pressurized, prayerful. His self-taught sax is his most distinctive voice, though, at times a shivering, Arabic thing like a quaking ghost, or sinuously sensual and serenely beautiful.”
UNCUT
"A simple yet beautifully executed reminder to reflect, find healing and resist vanity."
The Skinny
“Alabaster DePlume is unlike any artist of today.”
glide MAGAZINE
“DePlume är en sant originell artist i en samtid där det blivit en skriande bristvara.”
DAGEN NYHETER
"Die Zeiten sind hart und Alabaster strebt nach Heilung. Die Musik ist dabei aber nie lieblich-beliebig. In der Ruhe liegt der Krach des Aufruhrs."
radioeins
"Es geht um geistige Heilung und den Weg dorthin – den eigenen Schmerz zu akzeptieren, statt ihn zu bekämpfen. Auf dem Album folgt die Form dem Inhalt. Besser geht’s nicht."
HHV Mag
"These compositions not only represent some of the album’s most beautiful moments, but also some of Fairbairn’s most powerful work to date."
now then
“It’s a rare gift to make an instrument speak, rarer to make it communicate such a vital truth…”
Pitchfork
Across A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, DePlume’s reflections on healing, dignity, and struggle are communicated through a stirring assemblage of disparate musics: ghostly and ancient folk melodies, groove-anchored maelstroms of swirling folk-jazz, elegant string arrangements that strike a midpoint between Ravel and Gainsbourg (courtesy of Macie Stewart), disembodied voices reconfiguring into the shape of a post-modern Greek chorus, noir atmosphere, and allegoric, troubadouric song. Throughout, DePlume's intimate, confessional croon (a la Donovan or Devendra Banhart) and vibrato-laced tenor saxophone playing (a la Getatchew Mekurya) convey, with a startling humanistic touch, everything from dejected fragility to resolute strength.
Thank You, My Pain
London Film Screenings
Close-Up Cinema
97 Sclater Street London E1 6HR UK
November 20, 6:30pm | November 21, 6:00pm | November 22, 8:30pm
London-based filmmaker Rebecca Salvadori presents Thank You, My Pain, a poetic exploration of friendship, music, and artistic collaboration.
Salvadori began filming musician Alabaster DePlume in 2018 during her time at Total Refreshment Centre in London. Their collaboration deepened when Salvadori filmed DePlume at the Colour Factory in 2021. He later invited her to document his 2023 KOKO performance at Pitchfork Music Festival, create the artwork for his 2025 album A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, and direct a music video for the album's lead track "Oh My Actual Days."
Salvadori’s work documents an ongoing archive of relationships between musicians and artists — a body of portraits rooted in exchange, trust, and presence. Thank You, My Pain is both part of this archive and a personal manifesto: a deeply subjective film that honors the power of showing up for one another.
The London premiere screenings at Close-Up Cinema are presented by Ensemble Music, a new company run by Rob(ert) Farhat. All screenings will be followed by conversation with Salvadori and DePlume.
(( photo by Alexander Massek ))
...about Alabaster DePlume...
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 said 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: A 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.
“What's the opposite of sleep? It’s trying to sleep,” he says. “And so what's the opposite of looking for my value? It is knowing my value. It simply is there. My dignity is there. I don't need anyone else to know my dignity, or me, to know it. I know it first. I can't seek it from another. I stand for it.”
Selections from the poetry book ultimately became the lyrics across half of the tracks on A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, DePlume’s latest full-length work: eleven songs of agency and survival and presence; of confronting life’s pains rather than trying to avoid them; of banishing escapism. In sum, it documents his learning of the fact that dignity and self-determination are prerequisites for becoming whole, which is to say, for healing. If a blade were broken it would not serve its purpose; it must be unbroken, it must be whole, to be of use.
In the Alabaster DePlume songbook, the celestial ease of his instrumental tracks can sometimes feel like a trojan horse for a voice that is disarmingly honest about the heaviness of existence.
