Danalogue & Alabaster dePlume have spent the past few years traversing jazz cosmology in neighbouring orbit with one another. Now the pair come together for the first time on their debut album I Was Not Sleeping – a record that veers between dark dystopia and an imagined utopia in its synthetic psychedelia.
The duo met at London’s Total Refreshment Centre, a place that’s become something of an incubator for the vibrant new London jazz scene. Discovering a mutual love of Japanese anime film company Studio Ghibli – in particular director Hayao Miyazaki and his films Castle In The Sky and Porco Rosso – the dice game Hot Dice, and fictional intellectuals the Laputans from Gulliver’s Travels, they started to jam in the TRC control room
There were several aims that grew out of the project. We wanted to reject authority, leadership and hierarchy by fighting back through sound. We wanted to Improvise as deeply and honestly as possible, create unlikely futures, go on a journey with each tune, and play outside of our comfort zones. ~ Danalogue
Today the pair share the next track from the album titled ‘Broken Tooth Skyline’ which features guest vocals from Benin City / spoken word artist, Joshua Idehen. It’s ominous low frequencies and discordance that perfectly encapsulates the tone of the times. You can check it out here and here’s Joshua on the track:
When I first heard the track, for some reason I imagined it as the sound of London. The Dirty, Cynical Side. Honed in a bit on that feeling and I thought “well what’s Filthier in London beyond the Thames”? So I imagined the track as London, speaking with the Thames as it’s tongue. Hence Thames River Flow. ~ Joshua Idehen
It’s a far cry from the rest of ‘I Was Not Sleeping’ that plays through like a series of dream-like vignettes. It moves from scene to scene, with the pair careful never to return to previous sections in a pursuit to create music that’s constantly transformative. Their meeting points are woven into the record itself as themes and ideas. Miyazaki’s films, for instance, are about kinship, honour and the battle to find small moments of joy and beauty, amidst an industrial and political world in turmoil. Meanwhile, in their music Danalogue and Alabaster de Plume seek to find utopia amidst a real-world reality of austerity, divisional politics and a UK lurching towards the right wing. The title of the record addresses this explicitly.
It’s about accountability. If one day in the future someone asks me about this time now, I will have to say, ‘I was not sleeping while this happened. I witness what is happening around me now, I recognise I am involved in it, I am part of it, I cannot deny it, and I am prepared to do something to make it better, and to change myself in order to do so. ~ Fairbairn