Alabaster Deplume - A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole - VINYL LP

Hyperion presents a rarity in their ongoing Anglo-Australian artistic collaboration music by an Australian composer who was once at the heart of the English establishment. Malcolm Williamson was one of many Australian creative artists who relocated to Britain in the mid-twentieth century. Within a decade of settling in London he had established a reputation as one of the most gifted and prolific composers of his generation. However today, he is almost forgotten and his music virtually never performed. This set of his complete Piano Concertos is therefore an important document as well as a compendium of deeply appealing music. Piers Lane, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Howard Shelley are the ideal performers of these unjustly neglected works.

When we are boldly and sincerely requested as ourselves, as whoever we may be, we can, in response to one-another, create naturally, things that no-one could have ever specifically demanded we deliver. In order to record the compositions in his critically acclaimed 2022 GOLD, Alabaster instilled a culture of creativity by leading his ensembles in spontaneous composition and development. To allow them to be present, he kept them constantly creating. This resulted in an abundance of material that he has since produced and arranged, resulting in this collection. It is a piece made entirely of authentic, un-stipulated - yet welcomed - human interaction. It is similar to how elements in nature contribute to shared work and beauty without conscious motive - a bee's own motives result in the delivery of pollen. As Alabaster says himself, InchThe great thing wants to happen, let us allow it to happenInch On his first trip to the US Alabaster collected messages from individuals, to be delivered to the hearts of his audiences. One, who preferred to remain anonymous, encourages us to Inchcome with fierce graceInch Composed in the act of performance by and with Alabaster Deplume - tenor sax, guitar, synths and voice Falle Nioke - voice, percussion Rozi Plain - guitar Sarathy Korwar - drums, tabla Tom Skinner - drums Kenichi Iwasa - percussion James Howard - guitar Tom Herbert - double bass Natalie Pela - voice Rosa Slade - voice Elly Condron - voice Luisa Gerstein - voice Matt Webb - double bass Michael Chestnutt - synths Ursula Russell - drums Conrad Singh - guitar Hannah Miller - cello and voice Donna Thompson - voice Matthew Bourne - piano Momoko Gill - lead vocal Ruth Goller - bass

Vinyl LP pressing. 2023 . Rat Saw God is an album about riding a bike down a suburban stretch in Greensboro while listening to My Bloody Valentine for the first time on an iPod Nano, past a creek that runs through the neighborhood riddled with broken glass bottles and condoms, a front yard filled with broken and rusted car parts, a lonely and dilapidated house reclaimed by kudzu. Four Lokos and rodeo clowns and a kid who burns down a corn field. Roadside monuments, church marquees, poppers and vodka in a plastic water bottle, the S**t you get away with at Jewish summer camp, strange sentimental family heirlooms at the thrift stores. The way the South hums alive all night in the summers and into fall, the sound of high school football games, the halo effect from the lights polluting the darkness. It's not really bright enough to see in front of you, but in that stretch of inky void - somehow - you see everything. Rat Saw God was written in the months immediately following Twin Plagues' completion, and recorded in a week at Asheville's Drop of Sun studio. While Twin Plagues was a breakthrough critically for Wednesday, it was also a creative and personal breakthrough for Hartzman. The lauded record charts feeling really fucked up, trauma, dropping acid. It had Hartzman thinking about the listener, about her mom hearing those songs, about how it feels to really spill your guts. And in the end, it felt okay. InchI really jumped that hurdle with Twin Plagues where I was not worrying at all really about being vulnerable - I was finally comfortable with it, and I really wanna stay in that zone.Inch