Alabaster DePlume - To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1 LP

**New IA11 Press! 

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140-gram vinyl LP inside a heavyweight reverse-board jacket, with a 12-page 11x11" insert booklet (with previously-unpublished photos and new liner notes by DePlume himself), IARC 2025 obi strip and printed poly-lined inner-sleeve.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.

DePlume is a Manchester-born, London-based bandleader, composer, saxophonist, activist and orator. He’s a resident at the legendary London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre, a recording artist for the off-grid, Scottish Hebridean island label Lost Map, and now the latest arrival into Chicago-based International Anthem’s growing family of progressive musical explorationists. Whilst much of his music contains vocals – often whispered imperatives – this is a collection of instrumentals, drenched in feeling and recorded over four albums and eight earth years in cities across the UK.

The music of "To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1" contains naturally elegant orchestration wrapped around something visceral and primordial. Swirled inside the 11 pieces are shades of Japanese Min’yo folk, Celtic folk, the Ethio-jazz of saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya and hints of the pan-human ‘ancient music’ that sat underneath Arthur Russell’s melodies on First Thought, Best Thought. The music is filled with space, inspired, he says, by computer games and Japanese animation, particularly Joe Hisaishi’s soundtrack for Studio Ghibli’s Castle In The Sky.