’In every moment of the piece’, says Alex Paxton, ‘I’m asking myself what is the most sonically sensual thing that can happen here, and here, and here.’ The result, from a multi-award-winning composer described as ‘unique, inventive, brave and arresting’, is an album of joyful music performed by orchestra, ensemble and improvisers. With inspiration as wide-ranging as the artists Ody Saban, Madge Gill and Grayson Perry, the cartoon music of Roobarb and Custard, the water drumming of the African Baka women, or the sheer chaotic joy of getting a beginner class of primary-school children to make music together, Paxton’s work finds happiness in mess, friction and excess. As booklet writer Tim Rutherford-Johnson comments, ‘It is not necessarily, or not exclusively, music made from happiness. Rather, it is music that makes happiness out of very much more difficult things.