Danalogue and Alabaster dePlume have released a collaborative album, I Was Not Sleeping.

The profile of Danalogue, real name Dan Leavers, has grown recently due to the recent success of his work at the helm of The Comet Is Coming, and on both Snapped Ankles albums. This is the first time he’s worked with saxophonist Alabaster dePlume, or Angus Fairbairn, who recently released To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals, Vol. 1., his new solo album.

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, and also the record label behind this label.

Across the record, Danalogue and Alabaster dePlume seek to find utopia amidst a reality of austerity, divisional politics, and a United Kingdom lurching towards the right wing. The title of the record addresses this explicitly.

“It’s about accountability,” explains Fairbairn. “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 recognize 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.”

Much of the album came together at PRAH Studios in Margate, with the aim to play outside of their comfort zones and usual instrument choices.

“The approach is more as producers than in a live band setting,” says Danalogue. “We pieced it together by stitching a patchwork of material, and kept building and subtracting little by little, a bit like making a sculpture.”

There are guest appearances from poet Joshua Idehen, who appears on “Broken Tooth Skyline,” and Capitol K, who drops additional synth and drum machines on “All Who Wander Are Not Lost.”

Tracklisting

01. The March That Is Unstoppable
02. Gull Communion
03. Broken Tooth Skyline ft. Joshua Idehen
04. You’re Doing Very Well
05. Sundance
06. That’s Not Your Furniture
07. All Who Wander Are Not Lost
08. Create Unlikely Futures
09. Guest

I Was Not Sleeping LP is available now, with a full stream below.