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Dear Children of Our Children, I Knew is a new EP recorded by Alabaster DePlume in the middle of his March 2025 US tour. DePlume had been playing shows with bassist Shahzad Ishmaeli and drummer Tcheser Holmes, performing music of his critically-acclaimed album A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole (released March 2025). The trio's rapport was so strong that DePlume chose to use an off day in Brooklyn to record this collection of instrumentals, which were inspired by experiences he had sharing, performing and improvising off the music of A Blade for audiences across the US. Dear Children in a sense serves as an epilogue to A Blade, which makes it all the more appropriate that the B side of its RSD-exclusive vinyl release contains the three song EP Cremisan: Prologue to A Blade, which was released (digital only) in fall 2024. As with almost everything that DePlume has put forth in recent years, the connection of this work to Palestine is deep: the Cremisan EP itself was recorded in Palestine; Dear Children includes samples of children recorded in Bethlehem; and the album's cover art depicts wheatpaste posters of a drawing made by a 13 year old boy from Gaza (used with permission).

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 (majorly British, majorly committed) 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.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Visit Croatia
A2. What's Missing
A3. Song Of The Foundling
A4. Whisky Story Time
A5. Not Now, Jesus
A6. If You're Sure You Want To
B1. The Lucky Ones (with Danalogue)
B2. Why, Buzzardman, Why
B3. Not My Ask
B4. Turpentine
B5. I Hope

'A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole' is the latest album from London-based composer-poet-activist-improviser Alabaster DePlume, his first major work following 2022’s 'GOLD' and 2020's 'To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol 1'.

The 11-song album covers all of DePlume’s musical touchstones: lush and gentle instrumentals informed by ghostly ancient folk melodies; groove-focused rhythm explorations as a bed for self-searching spoken declamations; sweeping and beautiful string arrangements (in this case by Macie Stewart) set against his trademark vibrato-infused tenor sax whispermoan.

Most of all, 'A Blade...' finds Alabaster DePlume at his most purposeful and direct yet, building on foundations laid through years of writing and touring to craft this ambitious work. Here lyrical explorations of healing, dignity, and struggle set the tone of the music itself—the mysterious and tense sensuality of the Melody Nelson-like strings on 'Form a V'; the playful and idiosyncratic echos of the 1960s British Folk scene on 'Invincibility'; the golden-era Elvrum level of vocal intimacy on 'Too True' - it’s all handed over with such familiarity and intention that the album’s full sonic grandness reveals itself at an IV-drip-pace.

"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 eachother while we heal ourselves." - Alabaster DePlume

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Immediately reminiscent of some of the more off-piste Constellation Records excursions (Matana Roberts, Eric Chenaux etc), Alabaster DePlume's music is rich in jazz tradition but also swims with avant garde folk influence, with Plume's voice providing a welcome counter to the deep, oft dissonant instrumental element.

TRACK LISTING

1. Oh My Actual Days
2. Thank You My Pain
3. Invincibility
4. Form A V
5. A Paper Man
6. Who Are You Telling, Gus
7. Prayer For My Sovereign Dignity
8. Kuzushi
9. Salty Road Dogs Victory Anthem
10. Too True
11. That Was My Garden