Danalogue and Alabaster dePlume hitch a wild ride together with a freewheeling studio set for Total Refreshment Centre

Leftfield jazz producer Danalogue (The Comet Is Coming etc) has hooked up with spoken word artist and saxophonist Alabaster dePlume for an enlightening studio-based collaboration. What could have been a mess of ideas is instead an exploratory future-leaning set that is delightfully unhinged.

Proceedings are inaugurated with the freight train bass music and wonky organ workout of “The March That Is Unstoppable”. There’s a deadly playfulness from the get go and it’s impressive how Danalogue and dePlume keep things weird while detonating theoretical dancefloors. Matters go further sideways with “Gull Communion” and its electrofunk Bill Wells does “Organ Donor” by DJ Shadow vibes. That the music sounds as if it might fall apart at any moment, yet hangs together with ease, is testament to the fearlessness and production abilities of this collaborative unit. “Broken Tooth Skyline” then tears up everything in its path, with depth charge bass and ferocious delivery from poet Joshua Idehen. Words and synths stalk each other as bombs go off and speakers throb like something out of Videodrome.

Danalogue and dePlume never settle on a particular line of sound, but are continually escaping comfort zones and lighting out for fresh territories across the album. Thus there is the Herbie Hancock meets Jarvis Cocker future funk of “You’re Doing Very Well”, with dePlume invading the body of the former Pulp frontman. Whereas on “All Who Wander Are Not Lost”, dePlume comes off like Damon Albarn’s doppelgänger reading from Ann Quin’s Berg as the end of the world is ushered in by spectral motorcycle gangs. That all these wild ideas fit together without unravelling is much of the pleasure of the album.

Danalogue and Alabaster dePlume Bandcamp

Stewart Gardiner
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