ALEX PAXTON
Composer. Jazz-trombonist.
“wild and wacky to a new level...invigorating...classical, jazz, pop, baroque, minimalist, maximalist, acoustic, electronic - are stirred together and served up in 13 delicious dollops... impossible to listen with a straight face....head of steam...Imagine one of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention tracks fused with a hurtling Conlon Nancarrow piano piece and you’re still only half way there.” The Sunday Times
“Paxton wears his blissful mania on his brightly coloured sleeve...journey into the frenetic and the ridiculous...incessantly joyful album, bold and catchy, exploding in colors and melodies and thick with texture....a hopeful harbinger for the shape of jazz-adjacency to come... fast-paced, often comic, meticulously complex. It takes cues from video games, 1960s pop orchestration and 2020s pop production...clouds of counterpoint... sonic adrenaline...vying forces, but happy opponents, playing out scenarios in carefully choreographed dances.” Jazz Times
“Music that makes me grin and groove...super nova of a new work
Alex paxton is not shy of a brazen sensorial mash up...riot and a rainbow...brimmingly heartfelt multi sensorial, genuinely energising fizzer of a new work.
super charged joy...forces us all to sit up and loosen up and buck up.”
Kate Mollison, BBC 3 New Music Show
“I hear infinite possibilities...takes us places we have never seen before, as if we are in a glorious parallel existence. His music paints worlds that defy sonic possibilities...make the listener feel welcome at the party..maximalist heaven..It’s magical; there’s a “knowing” for me in Alex’s music that makes me feel at home...makes me (and so many others) small, gasp, and feel decorated like magnificent ice cream sundaes...This is where I dream of being in the (classical) music world).” i care if you listen
“extremely accessible in its tuneful generosity...astonishing formal rigor, sophistication, and an unerring ear for pop hooks...... a seriously entertaining and invigorating activity.”
Bandcamp Album of the Day
“entertaining contemporary music...wild, untrammelled, odd, enticing and – on all parameters – turned up to 11... infectious exuberance...it’s funny, both ha-ha and (in a good way) peculiar...diverse, but bound together by a strongly-defined compositional voice...this is not refined Swiss-chocolate music, this is the indecent sweetness of Jelly Babies and gaudy bubble-gum...jazzy rollercoaster-ride... “hanging out with your best friend, who you definitely don’t fancy. Not even a little bit.” It is intoxicating, and I think I might fancy the friend too. ...commitment to the weird...like a comedian who’s always “on”......going-back-to-primary-school dream...Above all I was swept along by Paxton’s inventiveness and energy” ARTS desk
“GENRE-DEFYING...electronic music; hints of contemporary classical music and moments that sound like a film score...inventive mind...unlike anything I’ve heard before...like being in a musical amusement park with thrills, twists and turns that are guaranteed to delight.” Cultural Attache
“Sound Strobe...kinetic, overflowing, and generous music...never sleeps, deliberately forgets his Ritalin, and his state of wakefulness merges with a manic episode...opens a window into the effervescent soul of the composer...perceives no boundaries...common thread of the score is the melody: an emotional starting point, a seeker of pleasure (the kind that touches the entire body)...thrilling”
Crescendo Magazine
“Wow. This is wild... happily frantic orchestral music....I found myself deeply engaged... they’ve channeled into my ADHD and figured that this must be how it sounds when I walk down the street...I can’t look away… it’s absolutely fascinating.... a ride unlike any other. Fucking crazy and meditative. Hell yeah.” Far Out Fox
“a true journey into the depths of how classical music should sound in the 21st century....ballets of birds in full breeding season, colorful animal show with diamond flashes...break down barriers and codes, with feverish creativity....unique music deeply rooted in our contemporary world, full of life and exuberance, contagious madness and rainbow bombast. Vital.” Silence and Sound
“A joyful and rewarding sonic experience from start to finish, set in a utopian ambient landscape, orchestrated like a symphony and decorated with ASMR inflections” Beat Burger
“British composer/improviser who'd wowed me at the Long Play festival in Brooklyn in May. His Scrunchy Touch Sweetly to Fall (Kite n Finger run) was vibrant! playful! Technicolor! ...enormous arpeggios in a cartoon ballet...wonderfully fresh.” Bachtrack - Ensemble Modern Live
“creates its own paradoxical world of teeming multicolour life, absurdity, Boschian sarcasm, and exuberance”
Explore Ensemble
“Paxton wears his blissful mania on his brightly coloured sleeve...journey into the frenetic and the ridiculous...incessantly joyful album, bold and catchy, exploding in colors and melodies and thick with texture....a hopeful harbinger for the shape of jazz-adjacency to come... fast-paced, often comic, meticulously complex. It takes cues from video games, 1960s pop orchestration and 2020s pop production...clouds of counterpoint... sonic adrenaline...vying forces, but happy opponents, playing out scenarios in carefully choreographed dances.” Jazz Times
“Music that makes me grin and groove...super nova of a new work
Alex paxton is not shy of a brazen sensorial mash up...riot and a rainbow...brimmingly heartfelt multi sensorial, genuinely energising fizzer of a new work.
super charged joy...forces us all to sit up and loosen up and buck up.”
Kate Mollison, BBC 3 New Music Show
“I hear infinite possibilities...takes us places we have never seen before, as if we are in a glorious parallel existence. His music paints worlds that defy sonic possibilities...make the listener feel welcome at the party..maximalist heaven..It’s magical; there’s a “knowing” for me in Alex’s music that makes me feel at home...makes me (and so many others) small, gasp, and feel decorated like magnificent ice cream sundaes...This is where I dream of being in the (classical) music world).” i care if you listen
“extremely accessible in its tuneful generosity...astonishing formal rigor, sophistication, and an unerring ear for pop hooks...... a seriously entertaining and invigorating activity.”
Bandcamp Album of the Day
“entertaining contemporary music...wild, untrammelled, odd, enticing and – on all parameters – turned up to 11... infectious exuberance...it’s funny, both ha-ha and (in a good way) peculiar...diverse, but bound together by a strongly-defined compositional voice...this is not refined Swiss-chocolate music, this is the indecent sweetness of Jelly Babies and gaudy bubble-gum...jazzy rollercoaster-ride... “hanging out with your best friend, who you definitely don’t fancy. Not even a little bit.” It is intoxicating, and I think I might fancy the friend too. ...commitment to the weird...like a comedian who’s always “on”......going-back-to-primary-school dream...Above all I was swept along by Paxton’s inventiveness and energy” ARTS desk
“GENRE-DEFYING...electronic music; hints of contemporary classical music and moments that sound like a film score...inventive mind...unlike anything I’ve heard before...like being in a musical amusement park with thrills, twists and turns that are guaranteed to delight.” Cultural Attache
“Sound Strobe...kinetic, overflowing, and generous music...never sleeps, deliberately forgets his Ritalin, and his state of wakefulness merges with a manic episode...opens a window into the effervescent soul of the composer...perceives no boundaries...common thread of the score is the melody: an emotional starting point, a seeker of pleasure (the kind that touches the entire body)...thrilling”
Crescendo Magazine
“Wow. This is wild... happily frantic orchestral music....I found myself deeply engaged... they’ve channeled into my ADHD and figured that this must be how it sounds when I walk down the street...I can’t look away… it’s absolutely fascinating.... a ride unlike any other. Fucking crazy and meditative. Hell yeah.” Far Out Fox
“a true journey into the depths of how classical music should sound in the 21st century....ballets of birds in full breeding season, colorful animal show with diamond flashes...break down barriers and codes, with feverish creativity....unique music deeply rooted in our contemporary world, full of life and exuberance, contagious madness and rainbow bombast. Vital.” Silence and Sound
“A joyful and rewarding sonic experience from start to finish, set in a utopian ambient landscape, orchestrated like a symphony and decorated with ASMR inflections” Beat Burger
“British composer/improviser who'd wowed me at the Long Play festival in Brooklyn in May. His Scrunchy Touch Sweetly to Fall (Kite n Finger run) was vibrant! playful! Technicolor! ...enormous arpeggios in a cartoon ballet...wonderfully fresh.” Bachtrack - Ensemble Modern Live
“creates its own paradoxical world of teeming multicolour life, absurdity, Boschian sarcasm, and exuberance”
Explore Ensemble
Happy Music for Orchestra ( Out 28th April 2023)
puplished by Delphian
![]()
“A Magician of Sound.
classical-jazz sonic blasts ...violently overwhelming...I was seduced, and am not the only one
...digesting Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five band recordings, John Zorn’s Downtown experimentalism, Harrison Birtwistle’s brash blocks of sound, music of the Celtic oral tradition, Hildegard von Bingen’s medieval chants — and it all comes out, sometimes at once...carefully constructed ...forbiddingly dense it is balanced by its playfulness... hyperkinetic rainbow-hued...its joy and freedom.”
Financial Times (Happy Music for Orchestra Feature)
“Paxton will Make your ears ping..brings brightly coloured, loopy joy to our ears..sweet energy & frantic humour...It’s jazzy & noisy & oddly serious.” The Guardian (Fiona Maddocks- Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“an opportunity to revisit that early life carnival of sensation, to suspend the imperatives of orderly and goal-orientated progress and luxuriate in immediacy...wild imaginings...Paxton forges structures that miraculously hold together, while threatening constantly to burst apart from the sheer exuberance of his tempestuous orchestration...the orchestra seem to skip, hop or spin as the mood of the instant demands....melodic fragments flitter like incidental patterns forming across the brilliantly tinted surface of a swarming continuum....conceptually sophisticated as well as irrepressible in spirit.” the Wire (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“...some of the most genuinely extraordinary orchestral music you’ll ever have the good fortune to experience....staggeringly happy...unstoppable, continue-at-all-costs need to sing. Melody is literally everywhere... exuberant kindred spirits letting rip with the simultaneous elegance and zeal of football supporters....a demented dawn chorus...ultimate experience for the aural senses – it’s undeniably a superabundance, yet it’s also an unbelievable, glorious treat” 5 against 4
“A raptors gurgling a cataract of catharsis, an album we can’t get enough of hear not he new music show...a pleasure garden of torrents and plashes” New Music Show BBC Radio 3 (Water Music)
“Sheer sensual sonic magic from Alex Paxton on that whole album...
I just wish they (Dreammusics Orchestra) were sound tracking all of my slumbers.”
New Music Show BBC Radio 3 (Love Kittens)
“Chaotic, frenzied and maximised sensation is the order of the day for Alex Paxton’s gloriously childlike...cartoonish world of blinding colour, elastic movement and warm humour...frenzied action...ecstatic surges and sudden lulls evoke a child gradually tiring themselves out with play...meticulous, finger-breaking arrangements. Paxton presents tension between raw, fleeting sensation and the restrictive geometry of adulthood...rich emotional expression...gorgeous, yearning melody...the difficulty of saying goodbye to a loved one is conveyed with moving realism. In focusing on raw sensation, Happy Music For Orchestra’s cartoonish character proves a disarmingly naturalistic, powerful means of expressing real emotion.” Quietus (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“a manic, full-frontal, maximalist music, coming at you like a freshly-unleashed tiger, with an energy that is inspiring & exhausting...African water drumming, free jazz, Ligeti, Roobarb and Custard...brave pursuit of a self-made vision...seriously intoxicating music” Arts Desk Happy Music for Orchestra
“dirty bubble- gum’...'Richard Strauss TikTok’... exuberant, virtuosic, at times beautiful, often impatient, energetic, juvenile, colourful, funny, messy, annoying &, yes, happy music... Textures and styles morph and meld with an astonishing speed across... cartoon music, math rock, movie music, free jazz, commercial jingles, cheerily little diatonic tunes...rococo of a hoarder's living room...dizzying and impressive... very contemporary: very very complicated emotions that are no less earnestly and strongly felt for it... like lying down on a couch completely exhausted but still scrolling on a smartphone... sheer super- abundance of novelty and thrill... hyper-virtuosic noodling...post-(post-post-post-)punk style... panying the flushing of a toilet...so much to enjoy in this music... extraordinarily vibrant and virtuosic playing from the Dreammusics Orchestra” Tempo Magazine
“A rising star...unique and restless approach...His style shines through with the use of a roaring and bustling brass, restless strings, high-pitched buzz and an omnipresent sense of playfulness and easy-goingness...Even without using electronic means, he creates the sense of a crisp hyperpop-infused electronic sound...(Bye) is reminiscent of meeting someone special who you do not want to part ways with... Paxton's lovely and complex layering of sounds, reminiscent of the hectic, anxiety-ridden modern-day lifestyle, should remind us that, even in the midst of unreplied emails, unpaid bills, and a growing sense of loneliness in a more-than-ever interconnected world, it is still possible to find joy and feel alive.” All About Jazz
"A candy store, which is so quite detailed excellent, so painted in all details. And then I had to think of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the movie...also has such a clownish, actually sad undertone sometimes....I was really quite often moved while listening... Really very beautifully produced, because despite this overabundance and this insanely dense texture, it all remains audible through and you can really get into this space... And it's all about joy, happy music, joy. Not in clarity, balance, perfection and good taste, but in disorder, friction, imprecision and excess...insanely precise perfection in this disorder is great, because the rhythms are so complex. I find it rhythmically totally interesting through these hetero rhythmic overlays...you actually never know what's coming. There is repetition, there are developments, you can sometimes read out something like motifs or themes, but actually it can all be over in the next moment and something completely different can come. You're always a bit up in the air and don't know what's going to happen.” SWR Record Review show “New Sound Carries”. (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“Playful entities... Over the course of numerous commissions and three studio albums Paxton’s has stood in defiance of traditional stylistic boundaries...uncompromising intensity...central to Paxton’s joyously maximalist aesthetic is an almost childlike innocence and playfulness present in so much of his work” Van Magazine (Happy Music for Orchestra feature)
“listen & then listen again & again to the music...like opening a treasure box..multi layered treat...beautiful orchestral arrangements...almost perfect fusion between jazz & orchestral...noisy, fulsome and evocative..a cordial and mesmeric patchwork..the entire album is captivating...any improvised music lover presses “play” they will find it difficult to prise themselves away..fun eye-popping music...clever individual and very very good...there is everything to love about this album.” Platinum Mind (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“marvellous stuff..meticulously arranged frantic unpredictable arrangements that give the impression of improvisation.. sounds like absolutely nothing else.” Boogalo Radio
“It's brave to even attempt to put this composer into one box...the promise of utter enjoyment is high.” Classical Music Daily (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“fun pieces...with child like joy” A closer listen.
![]()
“A Magician of Sound.
classical-jazz sonic blasts ...violently overwhelming...I was seduced, and am not the only one
...digesting Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five band recordings, John Zorn’s Downtown experimentalism, Harrison Birtwistle’s brash blocks of sound, music of the Celtic oral tradition, Hildegard von Bingen’s medieval chants — and it all comes out, sometimes at once...carefully constructed ...forbiddingly dense it is balanced by its playfulness... hyperkinetic rainbow-hued...its joy and freedom.”
Financial Times (Happy Music for Orchestra Feature)
“Paxton will Make your ears ping..brings brightly coloured, loopy joy to our ears..sweet energy & frantic humour...It’s jazzy & noisy & oddly serious.” The Guardian (Fiona Maddocks- Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“an opportunity to revisit that early life carnival of sensation, to suspend the imperatives of orderly and goal-orientated progress and luxuriate in immediacy...wild imaginings...Paxton forges structures that miraculously hold together, while threatening constantly to burst apart from the sheer exuberance of his tempestuous orchestration...the orchestra seem to skip, hop or spin as the mood of the instant demands....melodic fragments flitter like incidental patterns forming across the brilliantly tinted surface of a swarming continuum....conceptually sophisticated as well as irrepressible in spirit.” the Wire (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“...some of the most genuinely extraordinary orchestral music you’ll ever have the good fortune to experience....staggeringly happy...unstoppable, continue-at-all-costs need to sing. Melody is literally everywhere... exuberant kindred spirits letting rip with the simultaneous elegance and zeal of football supporters....a demented dawn chorus...ultimate experience for the aural senses – it’s undeniably a superabundance, yet it’s also an unbelievable, glorious treat” 5 against 4
“A raptors gurgling a cataract of catharsis, an album we can’t get enough of hear not he new music show...a pleasure garden of torrents and plashes” New Music Show BBC Radio 3 (Water Music)
“Sheer sensual sonic magic from Alex Paxton on that whole album...
I just wish they (Dreammusics Orchestra) were sound tracking all of my slumbers.”
New Music Show BBC Radio 3 (Love Kittens)
“Chaotic, frenzied and maximised sensation is the order of the day for Alex Paxton’s gloriously childlike...cartoonish world of blinding colour, elastic movement and warm humour...frenzied action...ecstatic surges and sudden lulls evoke a child gradually tiring themselves out with play...meticulous, finger-breaking arrangements. Paxton presents tension between raw, fleeting sensation and the restrictive geometry of adulthood...rich emotional expression...gorgeous, yearning melody...the difficulty of saying goodbye to a loved one is conveyed with moving realism. In focusing on raw sensation, Happy Music For Orchestra’s cartoonish character proves a disarmingly naturalistic, powerful means of expressing real emotion.” Quietus (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“a manic, full-frontal, maximalist music, coming at you like a freshly-unleashed tiger, with an energy that is inspiring & exhausting...African water drumming, free jazz, Ligeti, Roobarb and Custard...brave pursuit of a self-made vision...seriously intoxicating music” Arts Desk Happy Music for Orchestra
“dirty bubble- gum’...'Richard Strauss TikTok’... exuberant, virtuosic, at times beautiful, often impatient, energetic, juvenile, colourful, funny, messy, annoying &, yes, happy music... Textures and styles morph and meld with an astonishing speed across... cartoon music, math rock, movie music, free jazz, commercial jingles, cheerily little diatonic tunes...rococo of a hoarder's living room...dizzying and impressive... very contemporary: very very complicated emotions that are no less earnestly and strongly felt for it... like lying down on a couch completely exhausted but still scrolling on a smartphone... sheer super- abundance of novelty and thrill... hyper-virtuosic noodling...post-(post-post-post-)punk style... panying the flushing of a toilet...so much to enjoy in this music... extraordinarily vibrant and virtuosic playing from the Dreammusics Orchestra” Tempo Magazine
“A rising star...unique and restless approach...His style shines through with the use of a roaring and bustling brass, restless strings, high-pitched buzz and an omnipresent sense of playfulness and easy-goingness...Even without using electronic means, he creates the sense of a crisp hyperpop-infused electronic sound...(Bye) is reminiscent of meeting someone special who you do not want to part ways with... Paxton's lovely and complex layering of sounds, reminiscent of the hectic, anxiety-ridden modern-day lifestyle, should remind us that, even in the midst of unreplied emails, unpaid bills, and a growing sense of loneliness in a more-than-ever interconnected world, it is still possible to find joy and feel alive.” All About Jazz
"A candy store, which is so quite detailed excellent, so painted in all details. And then I had to think of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the movie...also has such a clownish, actually sad undertone sometimes....I was really quite often moved while listening... Really very beautifully produced, because despite this overabundance and this insanely dense texture, it all remains audible through and you can really get into this space... And it's all about joy, happy music, joy. Not in clarity, balance, perfection and good taste, but in disorder, friction, imprecision and excess...insanely precise perfection in this disorder is great, because the rhythms are so complex. I find it rhythmically totally interesting through these hetero rhythmic overlays...you actually never know what's coming. There is repetition, there are developments, you can sometimes read out something like motifs or themes, but actually it can all be over in the next moment and something completely different can come. You're always a bit up in the air and don't know what's going to happen.” SWR Record Review show “New Sound Carries”. (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“Playful entities... Over the course of numerous commissions and three studio albums Paxton’s has stood in defiance of traditional stylistic boundaries...uncompromising intensity...central to Paxton’s joyously maximalist aesthetic is an almost childlike innocence and playfulness present in so much of his work” Van Magazine (Happy Music for Orchestra feature)
“listen & then listen again & again to the music...like opening a treasure box..multi layered treat...beautiful orchestral arrangements...almost perfect fusion between jazz & orchestral...noisy, fulsome and evocative..a cordial and mesmeric patchwork..the entire album is captivating...any improvised music lover presses “play” they will find it difficult to prise themselves away..fun eye-popping music...clever individual and very very good...there is everything to love about this album.” Platinum Mind (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“marvellous stuff..meticulously arranged frantic unpredictable arrangements that give the impression of improvisation.. sounds like absolutely nothing else.” Boogalo Radio
“It's brave to even attempt to put this composer into one box...the promise of utter enjoyment is high.” Classical Music Daily (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“fun pieces...with child like joy” A closer listen.
iLolli-pop (October 2022)
“fantastically bananas free-jazz-orchestra maximalism ….. unmapped technicolour territory…. fantastical sound collages… like a cartoon rollercoaster… unfathomable glitching chaos…unique a vision as you might hear anywhere.” The Quietus
“Highly innovative, exceptional creative imagination and musical energy, packed with life force, unlike anything else.” BBC Music Magazine - The Ivor Novello Composer award WINNER 2021
“fantastically bananas free-jazz-orchestra maximalism ….. unmapped technicolour territory…. fantastical sound collages… like a cartoon rollercoaster… unfathomable glitching chaos…unique a vision as you might hear anywhere.” The Quietus
"a manic, full-frontal, maximalist music, coming at you like a freshly-unleashed tiger, with an energy that is inspiring...good-natured bedlam... spectacular multi-movement work commissioned by Ensemble Modern: it made me think of Harrison Birtwistle but with a broad grin instead of dour frown...Sometimes Voice of Aphex Twin...Corn-Crack Dreams of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five transported in a time-machine...seriously intoxicating music” Arts Desk ilolli-pop
“meticulously scored…seems to change with every bar, enfolding bite-size pieces of classic minimalism, brass brand tradition, electronic noise, & video game plasticity..intensely virtuosic and giddily joyful. electronically slathered trombone… Paxton is a monster improviser …connects his garrulous attack to the most extroverted playing of George Lewis & Roswell Rudd..."
Bandcamp Daily Best Contemporary Classical. Peter Margasak
“a virtuosic trombonist as well as a great experimenter.” Verity Sharp, Late Junction BBC 3. (ilolli-pop)
“a genre-busting work” ECLAT Festival
“Fantastic delirium...An effervescence of day glow energy that just can’t be resisted”
BBC 3 New Music Show, Tom service
“jovial and gay… Vivaldi-like spring chicken energy… this music is like a refreshing drink of water after a long period of thirst…manic treat to keep our spirits up” Morning Star
“absurdly colorful…delirious sound universe of Alex Paxton is a staggering experience, vaguely frightening, demanding and joyful at the same time: abundant, teeming, teeming, overflowing, luxuriant, it resembles these wanderings of nature in an accidentally and exceptionally favorable environment, so nourished that 'they escape any rule or constraint - not to mention the law of gravity.….a hair-raising disc.”
Crescendo Magazine
”uncompromising intensity” Van Magazine
“play solo that made the eyes sting and then use his slide to make farting noises and knock over pints on the front tables…’religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst”…In the hands of a master like composer / improvisor Alex Paxton, the trombone does all this and more. cheerful chaos – more Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em than Hellzapoppin’….crepuscular souls to perfection…Bone of his Bone Extraordinary.”
The Wire (ilolli-pop)
“wonderfully imaginative, manically energetic world of Alex Paxton, music that never seems to sit still, taking us on journeys across myriad brilliant textures and timbres…imaginative and madcap…terrific roller-coaster journey” Planet Hugill
“Paxton's imaginative tapestry of sound is one of the unexpected surprises of contemporary music: an elusive patchwork of improvisation and classical rigor, composite music and anarchy, a celebration of orchestral-jazz maximalism.” OndRaock
“a riotous, hot pink overabundance of love and rage” The Wire (Mouth Song Take 1. live)
“Paxton has become something of a go-to composer for adventurous modern classical, improvising and experimental groups…sugar-high toddlers on a speeded-up merry-go-round, tossing jelly tots to dancing revellers…clever, rambunctious and hugely playful second album” Jazz in Europe (ilolli-pop Review)
“One day, classical music could turn into this and in all honesty we hope so…decomposes , resembles, tears whole pieces, mistreats them, puts back together by making Beethoven coexist with Mingus… sonorous harlequin whose dress is not made up from rhombus but of various geometric figures…the sensations, smells, colours of what our lives could be if only we could emancipate ourselves from current conditions of Homo Economics and simply becoming Humanity: a wild race, stripped of convictions rigid teachings and guided visions of the world around us.” Roots Music.it
“whirling chases, where strings, brass, collages and percussion collide by pouring out billions of sound stars, drawing their origins from the history of music….ilolli-pop is a source of wonder, with its improbable crossings and its definitively singular approach, where experiments turn into explosive melodies clinging to our eardrums, seeking to unlock the secret of absolute music. Vital.” Silence and Sound
“of considerable interest to followers of contemporary Jazz…full of Changes of pace and mood..always great fun” London Jazz News (ilolli-pop)
“Tentacle Flow…I think of circus trombones, jazz, noise, cartoon tunes, brass, slot machines, Walt Disney, Stravinsky, little creatures munching away. And all of this at a rapid pace. Paxton’s sound is funny. And pretty crazy. Where does this creative abundance come from?” Berner Kuluragena
“playful and reveals in the juxtapositions of stylistic extremes, kind of like Glen Miller meets noise music.” - Micheal Schell flotation device KBCS radio. (ilolli-pop)
“Really quirky, fun, dynamic…Wow! gives your senses a bit of shake...I tell you, I had to listen a number of times…absolutely terrific.” James McDougall, BBC Radio 3 (Corn-crake Dreams)
"something between cartoon music, free jazz and contemporary classical music" Gaudeamus Festival (ilolli-pop)
ilolli-pop is the second album by prolific composer and trombonist-improviser Alex Paxton. The release is a collage of Paxton’s commissions for Ensemble Modern (Germany), Nevis Ensemble (Scotland) and HYPER DUO (Switzerland). The album is joyous, playful, often loud and maximal, yet always carefully composed. It combines both improvisation and triumphant melodies, alternating between solo trombone, percussion duos, electronics and orchestra.
The release is accompanied by an essay commissioned by Nonclassical and written by Robert Worby, excerpt below. Read the full text here.
“One other characteristic that stands out in this album is humour. Not so much being funny – “I’m not playing for laughs” – but maybe absurdity. The speed, the gags, the cross references, the googly eyes of the music that’s made with everything creates a bubbling effervesce. But everything also makes us ponder and think and wonder and marvel and ask, ‘Did I get that?’ No doubt, Alex Paxton would say, YES!”
Music for Bosch People (April 2021)
puplished by
Birmingham Record company and NMC labelMusic for Bosch People is in The Wire’s top 10 Modern Composition albums for 2021
“In a dark time this music will make you smile.....antic experimentalism.....manic contrast heavy.....This is the most joyous sound I’ve heard in ages!” New York Times
“Classical-jazz sonic blasts meets video-game bleeps meets noise music...
violently overwhelming...I was seduced, and am not the only one.” Financial Times (Music for Bosch People)
“Paxton, Like Hieronymous Bosch, is one of those rare artists who manage to make a virtue of excess.
The turbulent and joyful spirit of his music bubbles up irrepressibly in his trombone playing, and courses torrentially though his flamboyantly unpredictable compositions. . .Surfing the crest of their exuberance is an extraordinary experience.”
The Wire Magazine
"Paxton is a system-crasher of genre, who merges jamming video game soundtracks, musical overtures, virtuoso chamber music and jazz improv into an unmistakable style...highly complex, sophisticated and extremely entertaining, virtuoso ad absurdum" Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik
“Fun and really rich, varied, dense, maximalist, fun, joyful and unafraid.”
Gaudeamus Composition Prize 2022
“feels like an evacuation of something fundamental and urgent…bleeding chunks of something greater than sum of their parts; a compositional outpouring that started its inexorable flow sometime ago and will surely continue to spill on over after the neat boundaries of a mere CD’s runtime have been met.” Tempo Magazine
"Colourful wonder bag...glam rock - and dubstep-soaked thoroughly refreshing eclecticism...an impression of exuberant joy, real community, excessive partying and over-scumping champagne. So this Album might just be the best time imaginable!” Musik Texte (DE)
“Step forward Alex Paxton, incipient savior of difficult listening . . . formidable virtuosity. It seems to be a meditation on virtuosity: Paxton’s own take on Charlie Parker-style bebop or Paganini. . . . mountains of crisp detail that are legible when taken singly but accumulate into a surreal and overwhelming whole”
Positionen
“Operatic Game Boy music played by a virtuosic motley crew that’s inexplicably been hired to provide live jingles for a primetime TV show sometime in the recent past that never quite was . . .We hear the trombone run the gamut from furious chatter to muffled screams, sorrowful sighs into searing growls and back. “Virtuosic” doesn’t really cover it.” Point of Departure
"Not a lot causes this writer to laugh out loud, but this album did, repeatedly . . . images of an anarchic opera, samples from TV and film adding to this rich and borderline frantic mêlé . . . cutting-edge neo-classical with more than a touch of downtown New York-style jazz improvisation and, what’s more, it’s tremendous fun"
LondonJazzNews
- the music is whimsical, animated and polystylistic, with abrupt changes reminiscent of classic John Zorn, as though determined to portray an entire fantasy world in one tableau
- Sequenza21 Blog Micheal Schell
“life that this offbeat troublemaker tries to capture, and one wonders with what organs he writes: the laughter and the joys (it bubbles and sparkles), the excitements (reproductive or aggressive), the energy and vitality – like a sap that knows only springtime”Crescendo Magazine
“Alex is a bloody phenomenal composer and visionary” Prxludes.net
“Uniquely and audaciously manic. Call an ambulance, just in case.
This is one of the naughtiest CDs to come my way in some time…shares Zappa's creativity, and his talent for pushing his music as far as it can go without teetering it into anarchy…Ideas are thrown against the wall with machine gun rapidity, and they go splat all over the listener, no matter how adept he or she is ducking…It’s like bring tied down and tickled ruthlessly by a gang of nerds...not that I would know.” Amazon. 5 stars
“What none of the litriture says is that his music is completely bonkers. The tittle track is 15 minutes long & I loved the whole thing, it grabs your attention all the way through…I highly recommend this album it is great fun” Peter Slavid on European Modern Jazz,
“music of surprising energy complexity and wildness- its wild energy cannot but move - imagination never wavers - quite amazing”! Planet Hugill
“Superstar” British trombone society
“Totally missed this release until Seth Colter Walls covered it in the New York Times. In a word: wow. Alex Paxton combines elements of musique concrete, collective free-form jazz improv, and loads of humor and satire. Not much can prepare one for this music. The only comparison I might make is to Lumpy Gravy-era Frank Zappa. For those looking to stretch their ears, consider this atomic yoga. Turn it up.” Amazon - Top Review U.S.A
"The title Music for Bosch People implies a horrific set, but composer and trombonist Alex Paxton has subtlety in mind as well. The album mingles styles and timbres in a manner that reflects the painter’s turbulent art." A Closer Listen
Car-Pig
“Beauty comes in all shapes...genuine musical worth topped by the manic onslaught of Alex Paxton’s Car-Pig” The Times (Car-Pig)
Levels of Affection
NMC (November 2022)
Chamber Orchestra + improvising soloist
1.1.1.0 0.1.0.0 Perc. 2Pno 1.1.1.1.1
Philharmonia Orchestra
“extraordinary”
Tempo Magazine (levels of affection London Philharmonic Orchestra)
CORNCRACK DREAMS (2021)
(Alex Paxton with Nevis ensemble)puplished by Non Classical label
“Really quirky, fun, dynamic…Wow! gives your senses a bit of shake. I tell you, I had to listen a number of times, absolutely terrific.”
James McDougall - BBC Radio 3
SOMTIMES VOICES (2021)
(Hyper Duo)Indigne de nouPublished by Everest Records
DADD’s Fairies
Six Degrees of Separation. London Symphony orchestraPublished by NMC
“a joyful mashup . . .such an engaging energy and Ivesian imagination” Planet Hugill
TELLSONG(2019)
(When I see a Disney Movie I’m reduced to salty tears)Live at Listen Poney
“Manic, brilliant, beauty” Listen Poney
GO-PLAY