Celebrating the communal act of music making.

London-based poet, singer, saxophonist and orator Alabaster DePlume, aka Gus Fairbairn, is releasing a new album, called GOLD, via International Anthem this April.

Fairbairn recorded the album over two weeks in the summer of 2020, inviting a different set of musicians into the studio each day to record the same tunes, allowing him to later splice the recordings together.

Fairbairn also imposed two rules: the musicians weren’t given enough time to rehearse, and that they wouldn’t listen back to the recordings.

“They didn’t have enough preparation to be able to hide behind this piece of material or skill,” he explains. “They had to look up and respond to each other, and that’s what we’ve recorded.”

GOLD subsequently celebrates the communal act of music making and collaboration.

It follows the label’s release of Jamire Williams’s But Only After You Have Suffered — one of our favourite records of 2021.

Pre-order GOLD here in advance of its 1st April release, check out the artwork and tracklist below.

Tracklist:

2. Don’t Forget You’re Precious

3. Fucking Let Them

4. The World Is Mine

5. The Sound Of My Feet On This Earth Is A Song To Your Spirit

6. I’m Gonna Say Seven

7. Do You Know A Human Being When You See One?

8. Visitors YT15B – Jerusalem, Palestine

9. I’m Good At Not Crying

10. Now (Stars Are Lit)

11. Again (feat. Falle Nioke)

12. Mrs Calamari

13. People: What’s The Difference?

14. Visitors XT8B – Oak

15. Who Is A Fool

16. I Will Not Be Safe

17. Visitors YT15 – Krupp Steel Condition Pivot

18. Broken Like

19. Now (Pink Triangle, Blue Valley)

Photo by: Chris Almeida