Release Date: 23 April 2021
Award-winning composer, improvising-trombonist and bandleader Alex Paxton describes Music for Bosch People like this:
'It’s like minimal but loads more notes like video-games but with more song like jazz but much more gay like old music but more current like yummy sweet but more stick like paint but more scratch like tapestry but filthily like prayer but more loud like loud groove and more rude like fingers and faces too but somehow more smelly like smelly things cooking with more chew and change like louder prayers that groove with like stinking-hot-pink in poo-brown but even more desperate-like than that like drums and Dream Musics…'
His work draws upon a range of classical, experimental, electronic and folk music traditions to create a unique and explosive voice. The ‘Bosch’ in the title refers to the 16th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, whose horrifically fantastical images inspire Paxton to make highly-charged genre-hopping music that is joyful and exciting but with violent aspects mixed in as well.
'Manic, brilliant, beauty' Listenpony
Paxton uses the phrase ‘infinite MIDI synths’ to describe the way he composes. Tracks 3–7 began life as layers of recorded improvisations on a simple little stylophone and a small cheap MIDI synth, which were then written over with notation and orchestrated for a live band of drums, sax, guitar and trombone, electronics and tape elements. The title track is the densest, most complex piece he’s ever written and was composed especially for this recording. LONDONGLUM is a manic solo for vocalising trombonist that showcases Paxton’s compelling musical language.
Paxton was elected to the 9th International Composition Seminar with Ensemble Modern, has won the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize, Dankworth Jazz Prize, Leverhulme Art Scholar Prize, Harriet Cohen Music Award, appointed as London
Symphony Orchestra Panufnik Composer and has been commissioned by legendary multi-instrumentalist John Zorn.
Alex Paxton trombones, leader
Christine Buras soprano
Harriet Burns soprano
Mike De Souza electric guitar
Alyson Frazier piccolo
Matthew Herd saxophone
David Ingamells drum kit
Felix Josza electric guitar
Rob Luft electric guitar
Emma Purslow violin & viola
David Zucchi saxophone
AUDIO
REVIEWS
TOP 10 ALBUM 2021 IN THE WIRE
SEQUENZA21 BEST OF 2021
“In a dark, time this music will make you smile...This is the most joyous sound I’ve heard in ages!” The 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
"Flamboyantly unpredictable compositions. Turbulent and joyful ... an extraordinary experience." The Wire
“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
"Not a lot causes this writer to laugh out loud, but this album did, repeatedly. For improvising trombonist, prolific composer and band-leader Alex Paxton’s new electro-acoustic album Music For Bosch People is a witty and exhilarating kaleidoscope of musical ideas, with a stew of references ranging from musique concrète to Frank Zappa." London Jazz News
“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
“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
“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
"Paxton’s music and playing seems possessed by an inorganic energy: it doesn’t ebb and flow, it doesn’t get tired. It churns away with the unstoppable but varied mechanical precision of a washing machine, maybe a Bosch." Positionen
“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
"The disc brings together an amazing array of performing talent in a series of seven vivid tracks where the wildness, energy, imagination, anarchism and sheer complexity of construction leap off the page." Planet Hugill
"fun and really rich, verified, dense, maximalist, fun, joyful and unafraid." Gaudeamus Composition Award 2022
"Paxton is a system-crasher of genre, who merges jamming video game soundtracks, musical overtures, virtuoso chamber music and jazz improv into an unmistakeable style…highly complex, energetic work…stylish wit and sophistication and extremely entertaining…virtuouso ad absurdum." Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
RECORDING CREDITS
All tracks recorded at Residence Studios, Willesden Green, London.
ALEX PAXTON mixing
TARA TRANSITORY & NGUYĒN BALY (QUEER EAR MASTERING) mastering
Cat No: BRC011
Release Date: 23 April 2021