Explore Ensemble feature on two works on Alex Paxton’s critically acclaimed 2025 album ‘Delicious’, out on New Amsterdam Records:
Dadd’s Fairies
for quintet
Spit Crystal Yeast-rack, Dripping (à l'orange)
for sextet, commissioned by Explore Ensemble
Delicious is a joyous and satiating sonic experience from start to finish, set within a utopian ambient landscape, orchestrated like a symphony and decorated with a.s.m.r. inflections. The music unfolds organically, giving a sense of improvised structure, yet every detail is meticulously composed for maximum listening sensation. Like a flock of birds able to shift on a wing’s beat, Paxton finds the perfect pacing between these episodic dreamscapes. Momentum is key to this music. Each piece, section, or episode has a trajectory that feels surprising, yet inevitable upon arrival.
“This music is often rich in harmony and diverse stylistic influences, grown from our fast internet behaviours, video games, hyper-pop and highly detailed production. World-building for full bodily sonic experience: the heart, head, gut and bum. Technological fireworks fungi-fused with the pastoral,” explains Paxton.
The common thread in Paxton’s musical language is melody. He elaborates: “I start composing by following a feeling. Melody is the core of my musical language and the first thing I write. For me, tunes are the most tentacular of music languages able to reach all kinds of alcoves, juices and specialities of our existing. The harmony of a piece is always looking for the maximum pleasure and everything left to do I call “orchestrating’. Here I am constantly imagining to experience the music through the whole body, from large gradations you can feel in your navel to tiny nuances of sensual experience like rain on the back of your ears, or a funny smell.”
Praise for the album and Explore Ensemble from Bandcamp’s Peter Magarsak:
While a piece like “Dadd’s Fairies,” expertly played by Explore Ensemble, casts a different light, opting for an acoustic palette that’s less amped-up, the chamber arrangement still careens breathlessly through a wildly varied landscape, with classical verities given a pop-like gloss, and the flute of Taylor MacLennan and the clarinet of Alex Roberts slashing in giddy unison or emphatically diverting, suggesting a cross between pied pipers and and an Irish folk reel.