~ take me back home ~ 

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).

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 Walsh, Zubin Kanga and David Ingamells.

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)

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.

About Alex Paxton

Composer’s Program Notes