ilolli-pop by Alex Paxton

“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

“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. Your 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)

The release is accompanied by an essay commissioned by Nonclassical and written by Robert Worby, excerpt below. Read the full text on our website: https://www.nonclassical.co.uk/engage-1/alex-paxton-likes-to-say-yes.

The works collected here are joyous, high-spirited and vivacious and Paxton is present playing the trombone and sackbut in addition to being the composer. ilolli-pop is written with space for an improvising performer. The other instrumental parts are precisely notated. The piece was commissioned and premiered by Ensemble Modern. The music trickles in like the first drops of a deluge snaking around an arid plain then lines of melody and rhythm tangle together to create montaged scenes that always move forward but exactly towards what or where is uncertain. At the end, after a voyage around those strange attractors and modal gravitational fields, we’re left with the solo trombone in dialogue with a kind of heavy metal, distorted Stylophone and synthesized strings. The strings depart leaving the Stylophone momentarily discoursing on the journey until it too departs.

Sometimes Voices is a Teletubbies ‘again .. again … again’ synthesizer, sampler, drummer rough and tumble. Stop go stop go Spike Jones prog rock, new(ish) complexity gone haywire. The Soft Machine played at 78rpm. But it’s all written down. There is nothing haphazard here. Even Thora Hird threatening us with cream crackers is carefully located in the score.

The trombone appears immediately in Corn-Crack Dreams. Only it’s a sackbut, a Renaissance precursor of the modern instrument. The sampler and drum kit accompaniment is busy and abrasive. The piece is inspired by corncrakes whose call is like a broken fuse box looping incessantly, fizzing and glitching, sending out sparks that threaten anyone approaching.

Paxton’s solo trombone completes the album. Mouth Song is improvised. His work as a trombonist is a physical embodiment of working at his desk. He’s making a voice, focusing as a performer. He says that the possibilities here are narrower but deeper. It is something he works on every day, year after year.

Alex (1990), ”highly innovative...of exceptional creative imagination and musical energy, packed with life force unlike anything else” (BBC Magazine/Ivor Novello British Composer Awards.) is an award-winning composer & jazz-trombonist. published by Ricordi (Berlin).

Albums: Music for Bosch People (2021), ilolli-pop(2022), Happy Music for Orchestra(2023), Delicious (2024)

alexpaxtonmusic.com