Candyfolk Space Drum is an orchestral radio-scape extravaganza of symphonic proportions pulsating with jazz and children-choirs, groove, electricity and joyful life-blood. It is the fifth studio album released by Alex Paxton, the British award-winning composer, producer and jazz trombonist, described as “a magician of sound...hyperkinetic rainbow-hued...joy & freedom” (Financial Times) and “the most joyful sound” (New York Times).

His music has been celebrated for its physicality and colour, described by critics as “a riotous, hot pink overabundance of love and rage” (The Wire) and praised for “brightly coloured, loopy joy… sweet energy and frantic humour” by The Guardian. It will be release on Jonah Records on 3rd April 2026.

Candyfolk Space Drum succeeds Paxton’s 2025 releases including his debut on a US label album Delicious (New Amsterdam), which was lauded as “incessantly joyful, bold and catchy, exploding in colors and melodies” (Jazz Times) and listed as The Sunday Times’s best classical albums of 2025. Recent international acclaim include Alex Paxton’s signing to publisher Schott Music and large scale premiers performed by The London Symphony Orchestra, The NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Ensemble Modern, Klang Forum Wien. “Unbridled joy…sophisticated, passionate music full of pulsating energy and stylistic diversity.” (Ernst von Siemens Composition Prize)

This time Paxton’s “highly innovative...exceptional creative imagination” (BBC Music Magazine)  is fused into original bespoke ensembles that feature a wide variety of musicians - jazz musicians, school children, virtuosic classical players (London Sinfonietta, Riot Ensemble) and acclaimed soloists (Paxton on trombone, Jennifer Walshe on voice and Zubin Kanga on piano) to create a listening experience “like running through a park at full speed, sunlight exploding across your face, breathless but unstoppable” (Positionen).

“Paxton is a monster improviser” (Bandcamp Daily)



The music on Candyfolk Space Drum was recorded by London Sinfonietta, Children’s Chorus of The Belham Primary School (conducted by Aga Serugo-Lugo), Riot Ensemble, Dreammusics Symphony Orchestra, Jennifer Walshe, Zubin Kanga and David Ingamells.

Candyfolk Space Drum is an explosive act of creation that presents a radical vision of what art music can be when it listens closely to the living music of the society we inhabit. Drawing on groove, electronic music, jazz and the everyday music-making of children and adults and during it directly into its compositional bloodstream, the album refuses the separation between experimental art music,  social music making and everyday sounds. It insists on a music that is bodily, singing and above all experiential.

At the heart of the album is a compositional practice built on experiencing sound in the way it exists in our society, through radio, art music, live music, community music etc.

Paxton works a “you are what you eat” approach to creating, internalising groove-based music, electronics, jazz physicality, internet culture and collective singing and transforming these elements through meticulous, fully notated composition. These influences are not referenced or aestheticised from afar; they grow out of melody and the bodily sensation of music making itself.

Candyfolk Space Drum also asserts that art should be essential and embedded within society and that a composer can write on an international level while remaining part of the local community in which they live. Alongside virtuosic ensemble writing, the album foregrounds music with school children and jazz musicians who each bring layers of magic from their own performance practice. A formative image comes from Paxton’s past life as a primary-school classroom music teacher in London, teaching children in groups of 30+, mainly singing in a joyful, ragged unison — full of character, with no attempt to smooth eccentricity into choral cohesion. That spirit runs throughout the album: individuality is preserved, collective energy is amplified and music becomes social and alive.

Electronic and groove-based thinking is reimagined inside acoustic and orchestral contexts; symphonic landscapes are charged with the immediacy and physical intelligence of dance music and jazz practice and the authored character of notated music is infused into rhythmic languages.  In Candyfolk Space Drum Paxton presents composition as not only a living body that sings tunes, but also manufactures whole musical ecosystems for melodies to inhabit.

(Candyfolk Space Drum) “was not only extraordinary musically, but brought diverse communities together in ways that exemplified a new, creolized identity for classical music. Alex’s vision of new music could help to transform classical music into a true world music.” George Lewis laudatory speech quotation 2023 Hindemith Composition Prize.

Blue Chew Cheerio (Tracks 1-8)
Recorded by Riot Ensemble, Blue Chew Cheerio focuses explicitly on writing music that grooves. Inspired by sample culture, cartoons and the fragmented listening experience of the internet and 90’s pirate radio adverts, the piece channels the energy of electronic and dance musics while remaining fully notated. Paxton does not sample in the conventional sense — “I love making all the note decisions myself” — instead composing hyper-detailed instrumental writing that can behave like sampled material and folk traditions with nuances stylisms and personalities

PullBack Biome Dunk (Tracks 9)
PullBack Biome Dunk translates this abundance of sonic sensuality into the entirely acoustic setting of the symphony orchestra. The piece asks what happens when the souls of groove, and physical pleasure are embedded inside large-scale orchestral writing. The result is orchestral music that feels charged, bodily, and kinetic — a reimagining of symphonic density through the lens of beat-driven thinking.

Candyfolk Space Drum (Tracks 10-20)
The album’s title track brings Paxton’s multi-musical-community vision into sharp relief. The piece incorporates a group of school children singing in joyful unison, each voice retaining its individuality, with no attempt to unify into conventional choral blend. Performed by London Sinfonietta and the Children’s Chorus from The Belham Primary School and conducted by Aga Serugo-Lugo, the music also features a jazz drummer (Daivd Ingamells) — channelling the energies of future fictional dance musics — alongside Paxton himself on trombone. Paxton’s playing treats the trombone like a liquid, a singing singing body, foregrounding the thrust of line, and melodic elasticity.

Car-Pig
Car-Pig is Paxton’s only fully electronic work. Performed by Zubin Kanga on synthesizers and sampled keyboards, the piece unfolds as a hyper-pop-inflected radio scape of sound, writ large.

About Alex Paxton

Alex Paxton (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. He is sighned  to Schott Music with older scores published by Ricordi.
 
He has been described as “a Magician of Sound...hyperkinetic rainbow-hued...joy & freedom” (Financial Times), “a riotous overabundance of love and rage...an extraordinary experience” (The Wire), “a system-crasher of genre...unmistakable style...highly complex, sophisticated and
extremely entertaining, virtuoso ad absurdum” (Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik), and “a musical supermarket sweep. A swirling big-band fantasy, cartoonish and candy-bright, it seizes great handfuls of musical experience – mariachi, swing, Christmas carols, school recorder ensembles, a baroque jig... enticing invitation, made with swagger & plenty of groove” The Guardian. 
 
Prizes include an Ivor Novello, Paul Hindemith Prize: “a Brit who defies every conceivable genre boundary…an extremely modern and future-oriented style” Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize: “Unbridled joy…sophisticated, passionate music full of pulsating energy and stylistic diversity”, Elb Philharmonie’s Claussen Simon Composition Prize, RPS Royal Philharmonic Society Prize, Dankworth Jazz Prize.
 
Alex has released 4 critically acclaimed albums Delicious (New Amsterdam) MUSIC for BOSCH PEOPLE (Birmingham Record Company/ NMC label), iLOLLI-POP (non-classical) and HAPPY MUSIC for ORCHESTRA (Delphian) as well as many smaller releases. Each has been widely reviewed and featured in Uk, USA and Europe in broad sheets and Music magazines. He is a commissioned contributor to John Zorn’s Arcana X 2021.

Screenshot from London Sinfonietta CandyFolk Space Drum Video Youtube. Live Premier

Composer’s Program Notes

Blue Chew Cheerio

Strike and Blow, stoking electrical and other bits of sciencefact to keep YOUR FEET
improvising continuously intensive details. Improvements. Biological fiction. Still…you gotta keep moving aintcha? *(Lipsmacks)* Guts pulled at gibet, 1st swimming lesson. Drones hold their entrails runin’ all over the bloody place - batty. Tiny scales on the window sill boiled in death-throw-frozen-still nipple-legs PLEEEASE maybe a trade for something better still, here’s to hopin’, metamorphy and maybe some soul-transmigrationary sewn on broadsheetglossy-stuffed tights or…better still…jam today jam today jam today jam today…smells well bad but feels good held against YOUR TONGUE sizzles popping-candy chocolate spangles. Trying new things: midi-fresco tattoo meanly stained on mid an.alBUM didn’t know YOUR LOVER wanted until it flows, wept into the sheets. Bosch machine spinnin’on extrahot EP heartsichord in concert with…oh!…and that nice fuzzy YOUR-MOM-still-laughin’ feelin’ streamin’ Ye olde-sitcom song…just when you thought you’d get round to the washingup then damn n blast your goggly eyes, its pudding time again! Steamed.


Pullbackhat Biome-Dunk

(a Chat-Can Let-Go)
for Improvising Soloists and Orchestra

I wrote this piece for Symphony Orchestra + 2 improvising soloists (initially myself and Jennifer Walshe). Jennifer and I met for a jam/chat before I wrote the piece. We are able to continue the creative process here in live performances and on the recording. The orchestra part is entirely notated and the solo parts are improvised.

Body jiggllin’ there when that Heart can merely throb at it Guinea-pigged under a wet towel. Boggle. You might catch it. Fomo. On it. Cam’. lots of ‘em. Don’t share squiggle piggle! Get your own on 2 take off, pull right back and let go. fWaaaaalop! Smack lips. Then just bottoms and bums fall out, gurgle-swirl plugged-up buzzing and candy balls. Little bits there in the air to smell at. Egg. Soldier. A special dance with nan’s stretchy bits still. (Tough grain chew nicely).  

Humpty-Dupty’s Warning:
We are snack bats, And that’s that.
And, if you're at our snacks...we’ll attack, snatch and snap-back.
‘Cos we’re snack bats. And that’s that!
EAT.


Carpig

Travel barrel on the English channel.

Vibrating flesh machine, string, singing songs and television. strum hum ti dum. Waiting while i wash wot i’m not wearing. ”your face is dirty use a flannel!” It’s so bad mate, you need to clean it. Get one of those little hoovers which run on battery house smells early morning mouth (*grunt) Hog! The sodin’ vicar is leaning on the clutch, wearin’ it out. Grovalin’ aroun’ underneath, at your feet, your well, take a sip, wrong foot, leak…well cos you like it. Like you own it, when you need it, do you get me? Put the collar back on! It’s not a fucking ferrite. Carpig = Half car and half pig…yeah. Like transformers.