Angus Fairbairn, the Manchester-born, London-based musician who records under the name Alabaster Deplume, makes music that is extremely hard to classify. His albums feature some of Britain’s top jazz musicians, but you wouldn’t call it jazz. It’s an odd mix of creaky chamber music, clunky post-punk, lo-fi Afrobeat, avant-garde folk music and English whimsy. The self-taught saxophonist plays his tenor sax out of the side of his mouth in a breathy murmur, all simple phrases and fluttering, low-volume flourishes. He sings in mantras, occasionally lapsing into quite funny Robert Wyatt-ish spoken-word excursions. He also surrounds himself with fine musicians who push his simple songs into more challenging territory.
Last year’s album Gold was quite carefully plotted – each song was pre-written and recorded to a click-track with several different line ups; in post-production Fairbairn switched between those separate performances or layered them. This album features the more exploratory, improvised parts of those sessions. There is a heavy African influence: Guinean musician Falle Nioke brings his high-pitched, wordless vocals to several tracks, including the blissful opener, Sibonde, backed by Sarathy Korwar’s polyrhythmic drumming. Some are quite spartan: To That Voice and Say sees Fairbairn squawking out morse code messages on the sax while Ruth Goller plays bass guitar harmonics, and drummer Tom Skinner sounds like a drum kit falling down an endless staircase. Greek Honey Stick is just a duet for Fairbairn and Skinner – a thrillingly lo-fi mix of no wave guitars and drums.
The Best Thing in the World is a wonderful piece of creaky minimalism, a kind of steampunk techno created on double basses, massed guitars and a vintage synth. Best of all is Naked Like Water, a gently pulsating West African funk groove, featuring interlocking basslines, scratchy guitars and gospel singer Donna Thompson’s wordless voice rising above the aqueous vocal harmonies. Sublime.
• Come With Fierce Grace is released on 8 September
Also out this month
Naoka Sakata is a Japan-born, Sweden-based pianist who has worked in jazz and free improv contexts, but her solo albums are truly sui generis. Infinity (Pomperipossa/DIY, released 9 September) is a series of improvisations that use minimalist repetition, rhythmic intensity, atonal serialism and moments of limpid beauty to create a dizzying, kaleidoscopic and utterly compelling sonic environment. Hearsay are a slightly insane Chicago trio for drums, cello and turntable whose album Glossolalia (Amalgam, 5 September) is a woozy and disorientating blend of free improvisation, clattering drone music and turntable manipulation, the DJ-ing elements of which can be drowsy, textural or utterly manic. Quite unlike anything you’ve heard before. London-based composer Sam Eastman was commissioned by maverick composer John Zorn to provide fully scored arrangements of his endless Bagatelles series. Throughout The Bagatelles Vol.16 (released on Zorn’s Tzadik label on 8 September), Eastman’s artful arrangements lurch from Ellingtonian swing to colliery brass band, laced with fragments of Hollywood scores, surf rock and klezmer music.
