The British jazz artist Alabaster DePlume has announced the new album A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole, which will get released, via International Anthem, on March 7. The album includes DePlume’s 2023 “Salty Road Dogs Victory Anthem” and a new track called “Oh My Actual Days.” The latter arrives today with a music video directed by Rebecca Salvadori. Find it below.
DePlume produced his new album, and he recorded it with various musicians at London’s Total Refreshment Centre. Contributors to A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole include: electric guitarist Conrad Singh, drummers and vocalists Donna Thompson and Momoko Gill, cellist Hannah Miller, pianist John Ellis, violinists Macie Stewart and Mikey Kenney, and bassists Rozi Plain and Ruth Goller.
DePlume preceded his album, last year, with an EP called Cremisan: Prologue to a Blade and a poetry book called Looking for My Value: Prologue to a Blade. Discussing the new album’s title, the London-based artist explained: “A blade, because a blade is whole, it has forgiven itself, and because it will take a small piece of our opposite, for us to be complete. A blade has marked out these former selves on my hand, a blade made the lines that divine us and the blade is whole. A blade. While I forgive myself, and heal, and lead us in healing. We can only forgive each other once we forgive ourselves. We can only heal each other while we heal ourselves.”
Beginning in March, DePlume will go on tour in support of A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole. For his U.S. shows, he’ll be performing with multi-instrumentalist Shazad Ismaily and others. In the United Kingdom and Europe, DePlume’s band features percussionist Julian Sartorius, drummer Seb Rochford, bassist Ruth Goller, and string player Mikey Kenney. See the tour dates below.
A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole is DePlume’s first studio album since 2023’s Come With Fierce Grace. Revisit the Rising interview “Jazz Poet Alabaster DePlume Isn’t Afraid to Ask the Biggest Questions.”
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A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole:
01 Oh My Actual Days
02 Thank You My Pain
03 Invincibility
04 Form a V
05 A Paper Man
06 Who Are You Telling, Gus
07 Prayer for My Sovereign Dignity
08 Kuzushi
09 Salty Road Dogs Victory Anthem
10 Too True
11 That Was My Garden