Kevin Figes on Wallpaper Music III

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Figes has carved out a distinctive space within the UK’s contemporary jazz landscape, known for music that resists easy categorisation and continually pushes at genre boundaries. With a career that has encompassed quartet, octet and big band work, he has also collaborated heavily with Keith Tippett and bridged across jazz and experimental forms. His latest release in the Wallpaper Music series continues this stylistic trajectory, bringing together intricate composition, free improvisation, and an ever-expanding palette of textures and ideas.

A few weeks ago, Kevin joined me to talk about the musical influences that have shaped his creative outlook, the evolution of the Wallpaper Music series, and how he approaches the delicate balance between structure and spontaneity in his compositions…

Your musical career started when you picked up the saxophone. What was it about that instrument and the jazz genre that spoke to you?

Well, it didn’t start with jazz. I've got an older sister, and growing up she was heavily into The Beatles. So I became quite obsessed with them as a small child, and then that just spread out into being interested in all types of music really – but mainly rock and pop. I used to love watching Top of the Pops, all that sort of stuff. 

It wasn't really until I left home and went to university in London that I started taking an interest in jazz; but it was very sudden. I liked Soft Machine, which was kind of a crossover between rock and jazz, and I ended up buying an encyclopedia of jazz music. I looked up the most recommended records that I should go and buy, went down to Oxford Street, and I just bought about four or five records: Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus – I just took them home and started listening to them. 

Looking across your career, what musical influences have informed the way you create music today?

I like all sorts of music. I think I very much went down a jazz route for, well, decades. But I like contemporary classical music a lot – particularly the Italians. I've just done a project on writing in the styles of Bruno Maderna and Ennio Morricone, so I very much like that. I enjoy folk music a lot, so my last project (which hasn't been released yet) will be actually more of a folk one. I like bands like Henry Cow who took jazz sounds, rock sounds, and all kinds of influences to then put it all together. I very much like song form as well, so I like writing lyrics and songs.

Your latest volume in the Wallpaper Music series is about to be released – can you give some background to the project and the journey that’s taken you to this third instalment?

For the first album, I was looking to write longer forms and to start to write in a slightly different way. I started to create more actually, so it's definitely more composed. At the same time, when there's improvisation, it's quite free – which is another thing I'm really into.

So I surrounded myself with people who can do that very well. There were lots of different influences in the composing; just studying composers to see what they did, and understanding how people integrated improvisation into that as well - how it happened.

It perhaps signalled the start of me being quite interested in songs, which has become a bit more prevalent now. For the second album, I wanted to write some shorter pieces –  apart from anything else, it's a huge effort to write long pieces. And also, I could see the beauty in small pieces, so I enjoyed doing that. 

With regards to the last album, in some ways I think it's more refined than the second one, actually. Getting used to recording techniques and how best to record things and mix them as well is a never-ending journey. I was thinking about instrumentation: so playing different saxophones, different flutes, employing different keyboards, and even using found sound as well. I like collecting sounds, so I started to use them in the recordings too.

When you think about the compositional approach, it involves quite a lot of exploration and freedom. How do you navigate that balance between the structure of a composition, whilst keeping it open for that expression?

That's a good question. I do study, so I'll get scores – you know, I've even used Presto Music to get some – and then more recently I’ve tried to use techniques but not determine the outcome; I'll try and use a technique, but make it my own. In the past, it's been more guesswork, but there is a danger in that, which is that you end up sounding like a poor imitation of something that you've listened to. So there is a moment normally in the process where I sort of go ‘maybe this bit's working quite well, or this bit isn't working’. Or sometimes you have to tear it up and start again. I reflect on whether to change the feel completely, so it could be switching the tempo, or mixing up the instrumentation. Personally, I think you know when you're onto something – at least, I know when I'm onto something and I know when I'm not. It's difficult to put into words, but that's how it works. 

Given your amount of musical experience and success, it's interesting that you touch on the notion of study...

I love it. Even when I was looking at standards the other day, I was looking at a chord progression and I discovered that if you ask AI now on the phone, it can come up with some very sophisticated answers about harmony, but I knew that there was one glaring error in it. So obviously you have to be careful, but it was interesting that it was coming up with some interesting ideas.

How did the ensemble shape the final sound and what made this group of musicians the right fit for this project?

For many years I worked without a vocalist, and then I started getting quite interested in introducing that into the music. Initially, we had a different vocalist for a while, Emily Wright, and she ultimately stepped away after she had a family. Brigitte (Beraha) I'd known for twenty, twenty-five odd years. We went to the Guildhall together and we're good friends. So she became involved in the project, and she's been on the last three albums. She's incredibly flexible, can read the parts, talks to me about the words, and I know she's a great improviser as well. So it’s been absolutely great. 

Jim (Blomfield) I've worked with for many years, and we’ll get together and talk about keyboard sounds – that's a big topic actually – and about how things should be played. I've become more proactive with Mark (Whitlam) who drums, because I sort of used to think that the drummers looked after themselves, but I think we both realised that he was looking for more from me. I discovered that I had certain ideas about how things should sound on the kit, so I'm much more involved in trying to give some guidance as to what I’m going for, which is great. 

With Ashley (John Long), who's a superb reader and a superb improviser, I’m able to have a conversation incredibly easily about the sound I’m trying to achieve. So I try to surround myself with people like that.

A cinematic feel weaves throughout the record – do you think visually when composing?

I should say that I love film. Film is my second love – sometimes it's even my first. So I absolutely love film, and obviously the soundtracks that go with them as well. I do try in that sense, particularly with lyrics actually, to conjure up an image of the lyrics. There are pictures to go with the words.

A track like “Modern Times” brings in a punk-influenced energy to the album – so what inspired that to enter the composition?

Oh, that's very easy to say. When I was about sixteen or seventeen, punk became a big thing. I used to get magazines Melody Maker and Sounds, and I started buying punk singles. So it was a very exciting, but quite brief, time. I still like that energy, and it still is a breath of fresh air to me sometimes to literally have that attitude.

Can you share the reasoning behind the humorous title of ‘Dorian Gray’s Bathroom Cabinet’? 

I suppose I was thinking of the character of Dorian Gray and the mirror, and bathroom cabinets normally have a mirror on the front of them. So it was like a second grade Dorian Gray thing. If you imagine that in the film that he goes up to this huge decorated mirror and there's a secret door, I just thought that a bathroom cabinet with a cheap mirror on it was like a second grade twist on it. 

‘Same Time Next Week’ has been described as Morricone-inspired. What draws you to that kind of influence?

Actually, the first thing that drew me to Morricone were Italian Giallos films of the 70s, where I didn't even know he was the composer. I’d watch the film and think that the soundtrack was really interesting, only to find out it was Morricone time and time again. I’d start to look out for the composer’s name and I realised that Morricone's output was massive, you know? He employed such an interesting use of instruments and combinations of sounds – really cut back, or big band influences and jazz, or sometimes some really nice chord structures and song types, insistent little melodies which I found very, very interesting. I mean, I know he had a huge output. My favourite era of his is definitely during the 70s, I would say.

‘Strangers on a Train’ closes the album with spoken text and improvisation. Why close the album in this way? 

It's different. Also, I make films and I'm very interested in dialogue. The idea literally came to me because I was getting a train back from Paddington and sitting in a two-seater by the window. As people were coming on and off the train, all I was literally thinking was ‘I really hope nobody comes to sit next to me’, and nobody did. But as the train was going along, I began thinking about what if somebody had come and sat next to me? I started to remember Hitchcock's Strangers on the Train – I probably didn't remember it that accurately – but I do remember that the two guys are sitting opposite each other, and one seems to know rather a lot about the other, so I sort of took that stage further.

I thought, well, let's allow this to go into an improvised dialogue at the end, which was great, because I've done this with Brigitte before. I love the idea that you can uncover a little bit of yourself doing this as well – some things come to light. If you can laugh at it, it's great too. Things about your personality, or fears, or things that make you uncomfortable, I like creating a space to explore all that.

What do you hope listeners take away from the album after hearing it in full?

I hope people really just listen to it in a very open way. Putting things into pigeonholes has always been a problem for me, so there will be people that don't like it, I know that. There will be people that might expect a more straight-ahead jazz album, and that's not what it is. But it's not a classical album either, and it's not a folk album, and it's not a rock album. So it's like, ‘what is it?’... I don't know. It's a sort of combination of all those things. I just do it because I love doing it, and that's what I want to do. There's no commercial aim involved in this whatsoever, it's just that I feel driven to do it. It's very fulfilling for me to do, and if other people like it, then that's great. I want to communicate certain feelings, certain emotions, or maybe certain things that I’ve felt when I've been watching films, so I'm trying to get those feelings across.

Is there a fourth volume on the horizon?

Possibly…I recorded another album back in January, which is a folk album actually, but Brigitte is on it along with Ashley and a young folk guitarist, Henry Ailing, who is great. I don't play any saxophone or anything, I just play flutes, and I wrote using the guitar. When I was a kid I played guitar a little bit, so I picked it up again – it hurt my fingers and took about two weeks before I could actually play it for half an hour… I sort fiddled around in a very non-technical way, and worked out the sort of sounds that I wanted. That's going to come out maybe towards the end of the year, so that's the next thing really.

A huge project for a twenty-piece with the Bristol Ensemble and Violins that I did last year is going to happen again on 2nd November in Bristol. I wrote all the music for it, so that huge project will get another outing which is exciting. 

Wallpaper Music III is available on Friday 10th April 2026, on Pig Records in association with ECN Music.