Alabaster Deplume

Alabaster DePlume serves as the performing identity of Angus "Gus" Fairbairn, an England-based writer, saxophonist, orator, producer, and guitarist. From the moment Copernicus: The Good Book of No appeared in 2012—an album that resists straightforward classification—DePlume has fused jazz, folk traditions drawn from the British Isles and additional worldwide sources, spoken word, and further elements while functioning both as bandleader and sideman. The year 2013 brought The Jester, a large-ensemble avant-cabaret project created with composer/pianist Daniel Inzani. Two years after that came The Peach, a large-ensemble effort that remains intricate yet approachable by merging a song cycle, jazz improvisation, and folk. At the Corner of a Sphere arrived in 2018 as an experimental chamber-jazz-cum-singer/songwriter collection. February 2020 marked the release of his International Anthem debut, To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals, Vol. 1, with I Was Not Sleeping, recorded alongside Dan Leavers, surfacing several months later. In 2022 DePlume issued Gold, which interlaces spoken word and spiritual jazz. A year afterward he delivered Come With Fierce Grace, material left over from Gold that received thorough reworking until it stood as an entirely fresh creation.

Raised in Manchester, England, Fairbairn developed an early fixation on sound and music, along with the idea of performing it “not the right way” and “as it was never meant to be played.” His teenage punk and post-punk bands, for instance, avoided the standard 4/4 or even 2/4 meters; the guiding principle remained the creation of “very precise loud shouting angular rock.”

Midway through the 2000s Fairbairn recast his approach. He ceased playing in bands and instead adopted the persona of a drunken traveler who recited poems across the U.K. and Ireland in bars, on street corners, inside bookstores, and within tube stations. After returning to Manchester he took up residence in a Georgian manor house occupied by “chaotic guitarists,” a setting filled with front-room jams and survival gigs. While intoxicated he absorbed saxophone technique by watching and listening, then joined the players; from that point he cultivated a melodic and understated style that secured him work accompanying fellow Mancunian singer/songwriter Liz Green on her tours and recordings.

Throughout the same period Fairbairn spent ten years assisting adults with learning disabilities, encouraging social engagement through dance outings, car rides spent singing together, and collective humming. Many of the songs and instrumentals that later surfaced on his early albums originated during these activities. Chance and circumstance shaped much of his path. His performing alias emerged one day when passersby in a speeding car shouted words at him that he could not decipher yet interpreted as “Alabaster DePlume,” thereby establishing his stage identity. All the while he continued refining concepts for recording and live presentation.

DePlume’s debut album arose through similarly idiosyncratic circumstances. During a difficult emotional stretch he wrote songs continuously, sometimes composing while walking and singing to himself. Seeking to externalize oppressive feelings, he reserved studio time and an engineer, enlisted friends, and tracked material at Lymefield Studio in Middleton. His plan was to purge negative emotions by issuing the results himself on vinyl; the outcome was 2012’s Copernicus: The Good Book of No on Debt Records, a set that already displayed his hallmarks of world-weary spoken word within a virtually unclassifiable song cycle.

The following year DePlume connected with Bristol-based pianist and composer Daniel Inzani (Spindle Ensemble, Tezeta). They assembled ten musicians and singers for a program of theatrical spoken-word poems and songs, fugues, and interludes featuring chorus, horns, strings, piano, and percussion. Both this album and its predecessor earned acclaim in the U.K. and northern Europe, leading to BBC appearances. Concepts drawn from the two recordings were later adapted into a theater piece for the Bram Stoker Festival in Dublin.

In 2015 DePlume released The Peach under both his stage and given names. He, fourteen musicians, and nearly one hundred vocalists recorded across four studios while incorporating abundant field recordings to explore themes of inclusivity, music, and travel; the resulting palette ranged from jazz to Japanese folk music. International recognition followed, expanding his touring reach.

The 2018 album At the Corner of a Sphere assembled labyrinthine songs, poems, and complex yet accessible motifs. While affirming an inclusivity that implicates everyone in society’s poles of achievement and blame, DePlume also addressed overtly political subjects, including post-colonial relics, Britain’s class system, Tory nationalism, and white privilege within the arts community. Issued by Johnny Lynch’s Lost Map Records, the collection received praise throughout the U.K., the U.S., and Canada and prompted the 2019 live-and-remixed companion If in Doubt, Yes: The Corner of a Sphere Live and Remixed.

Near the close of that year DePlume signed with Chicago’s International Anthem. February 2020 brought To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals, Vol. 1, whose contents comprised both new pieces and vocal-less tracks omitted from his first four albums. The individuals named in the title were clients at Ordinary Lifestyles, the Manchester organization supporting adults with socialization disabilities where he had worked. The release drew widespread, largely laudatory reviews. Bon Iver later sampled segments from several tracks as well as “Visit Croatia” from the debut for the song “PDLIF.” With touring curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, DePlume returned to the studio with Danalogue the Conqueror (aka Dan Leavers) of the Comet Is Coming to produce the digital album I Was Not Sleeping; he also appeared on the track “Amoeba’s Dream” from Danalogue and drummer Sarathy Korwar’s EP Equinox.

Later that summer he booked two weeks at London’s Total Refreshment Centre, recording to tape with Kristian Craig Robinson (aka Capitol K). A fresh group of musicians arrived each day; they performed the same pieces at identical tempos while DePlume produced, then edited and assembled the results. The sessions yielded the nineteen-track double album Gold, which traverses film music, improvisation, loosely composed songs, and interludes across jazz, Carnatic music, folk, pop, and dub created in the moment. Released in April 2022, the set honors the communal nature of music-making and the cultivation of interpersonal and community bonds while deliberately sidestepping conventional recording methods.

Enthralled by the Gold process, DePlume captured far more material than could fit on the album. He sifted through the surplus, selected certain pieces, reworked, edited, and re-recorded others, and a year later issued Come With Fierce Grace, a collection drawn from the remaining Gold recordings that had been thoroughly reshaped into an entirely new album, released in September 2023.