Alabaster DePlume

Let’s begin with the name: Alabaster DePlume. A moniker that hovers somewhere between a Victorian apothecary and a surrealist stage act, evoking both artifice and incantation. It suggests something theatrical, knowingly constructed which is apt, in a way. But what unfolds when he performs is less performance, more invocation. DePlume doesn’t so much take the stage as fold himself into it, like ink bleeding into water. He moves through music, poetry, and comedic storytelling with the ease of someone who is constantly reshaping the boundaries between art and life.

Before the chaos of his performance began, I noticed him crouched by the wall, tucked into a quiet corner of the room during Lucy Gooch’s set. While she created a space of atmosphere and calm, DePlume folded himself into it. With a stack of handwritten papers in his lap, he swayed gently, his body absorbing the room’s energy. Gooch’s music, with layering synths and liturgical vocals, seemed to pull DePlume deeper into the room, into the very current of energy that would soon animate his performance.

Then DePlume hit the stage. Arms out like a preacher or a man about to fall backwards into a lake. He held a long conductor’s stick (or was it a wand?), teasing the room open with gestures and anecdotes before blowing a single breath into the saxophone – no note, just presence. The band began to swell around him: violinist, drummer, a guitarist who sings in keening mantras. There was no setlist. This was improvisation as séance, as collective risk.

The sax sounded like a voice remembering how to speak. It shuddered, faltered, and curled into itself. Then it bloomed. Then it disappeared. Every noise felt on the verge of collapse or transcendence.

There was something deeply funny about it all. DePlume howls “Yes!” after each piece like someone who's just solved death. He dances with joyful inelegance, part toddler, part prophet. At one point, he spoke through his instrument with an incantation of breath and nonsense syllables that landed with emotional precision. The saxophone as tongue, not brass.

I had come expecting to hear tracks from his latest album A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, but instead, found myself in a completely different experience. What unfolded was pure improvisation – an unfolding moment being created on the spot, with no setlist, no agenda, just instinctual flow. The only track from the album, ‘That Was My Garden’, was saved for the very end.

“This was made because you’re here,” he told us. It doesn’t feel like flattery. It feels true. The music’s wild fluctuations, with its ecstatic peaks and sudden ruptures, mirrored the room’s mood. There were moments of near-silence, of complete derangement, of something close to prayer. It was beautiful and deeply odd.

Then came the shift: an improv packed with gusto, the sax snarled and the drums thundered like something post-apocalyptic. It sounded violent, menacing even. If the earlier section was spiritual jazz, this was jazz possessed by metal – metal-jazz if you will.

Throughout, DePlume repeated certain phrases like spells: I can feel you. Thank you for not taking any bullshit. I think you are doing very well. Depending on your mood, they’re either fridge-magnet banalities or radical affirmations. Tonight, they felt necessary.

What was this? A Not quite theatre, though it understands performance. Not quite sermon, but certainly spiritual. It evoked the spiritual electricity of Pharoah Sanders, the mumbling mantras of Moondog, and the poetic cadence of Leonard Cohen. What it was, though, was real. Genuinely, viscerally real. It was a moment of connection, raw and unfiltered, where art became a portal, and we, the audience, were both witness and participant. The album carries that same energy – it's a reflection of the live performance, and each listen reveals something new. Give it a go.