“Dear Children Of Our Children, I Knew: Epilogue” is in some ways a short twenty-six minute compendium to the pagan spirituality of the latest album “A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole”, but Alabaster DePlume's new project is much more than a simple collection of five pieces recorded during the 2025 American tour.
The new album by the English saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist was born from the strong understanding born on stage between DePlume and his two traveling companions Shahzad Ismaily (bass) and Tcheser Holmes (drums). The intense sound material of these five instrumental pieces is not limited to pure musical data. In fact, the cover images are enough to capture powerful socio-political signals: the drawing, composed with the technique of wheatpasteis the work of a 13-year-old boy from Gaza, a message that is strengthened by the dedication to one of the many martyrs of the war, Obaida Ahmed al-Qiram, which appears on the cover.
Master of the poetics of pain, Alabaster DePlume disseminates further signs of malaise and suffering. The latest single “Glass” is not only one of the most solemn and evocative pages of the project, but is also the nodal center of a profound reflection that the musician has enclosed in a few words: “The superheated sand melts. It becomes clear, transparent. As it hardens, it becomes glass. We shatter the glass, and it is reduced to splinters. Yet it still manages to shine, in a certain sense. They are transparent. How can a human being endure extreme and brutal punishments, and yet still shine, still be transparent, clear, still refract the light?”.
The link between DePlume's personal semantic strategies in an avant-jazz key and the fate of the Palestinian people is further contained in the recordings made in Bethlehem, where the only protagonists are the children, whose shouting is increasingly similar to a final request for help (“What Did The Child Say/ Facing Reality”) to which the world seems to be deaf and indifferent.
06/24/2026
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
