ALEX PAXTON
Composer. Jazz-trombonist.
DECLICIOUS (2025)
New Amsterdam
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The Sunday Times’s best classical albums of 2025 so far.
“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
Delicious
(New Amsterdam 2025)The Sunday Times’s best classical albums of 2025 so far.
“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