Alex Paxton // ilolli-pop CD

イギリス・ロンドンのトロンボーン奏者Alex Paxtonが、2022年10月に同国実験レーベルNonclassicalからリリースしたCDです。

15名が参加したフリージャズ・オーケストラ8曲を収録。デジパック仕様です。

レーベルその他作品はこちら /// Click here to see more Nonclassical releases available at Tobira.

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Comes in a lovely 4 panel card case with booklet and artwork by Alex Paxton.

Nonclassical:

" 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."

Selected Reviews:

Crescendo Magazine:

“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.”

Silence and Sound:

“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.” 

Artist : Alex Paxton

Label : Nonclassical