‘When the Water Came’ is my first ‘personal project’ since 2020.

For sometime after this period (the pandemic, during which I also moved countries), I didn’t feel like working on music for myself, or at least not in the way that I wanted to release something as a stand alone musical project. I experimented with plenty of demos and continued my practise in the mean time but I had no desire to start a project of my own. I was very busy working with theatre, dance and cinema and put all of my musical creativity into these joint ventures, many of which I am very proud of.

What changed my mind?

At the beginning of 2025 I had a bit of a break for the first time in over a year after touring intensely with a few different shows. At the end of the year I then got a bit sick, which made me slow down for a few weeks around new year and gave me a forced rest and change of perspective, as well as a chance to think about what I was trying to achieve with music and what I wanted to create moving forward. I had learned a lot that year from various creations, (in particular ‘Theatre of Dreams’ with Hofesh Shechter company), and felt like I was now ready again to start using some of this in my own work.

I love music that creates visuals. Whether these visuals are real, like for example a theatre show, or ones that are not and are created in ones imagination when listening to a piece of music. This has always been what has excited me when composing. 

I also love escapism. Not because I don’t like ‘real life’ whatever that is, but I love being totally engrossed in a novel, or a series, a show or even some scenery on a walk. So I felt like stepping out of the quotidian of daily life and going back to the basics to do what feels natural (creatively) for me, have my escapism and become engrossed in some compositions solely on what I felt like at the time.

I had an initial idea (not at all an original one, but a desire nevertheless) to write a piece of music for each element. Earth, water, fire, air, space. After a while it was clear that this was not really what I was writing about, but more natural states, such as floods, fires or even simple states like daybreak or sunset and how they are always changing, and how this makes us feel and react. This is not music about climate change, (though maybe it should be), but mere observation of the states of nature and how this changes the way we perceive the world.

Creativity aside, in order to write and record music one needs to have some sort of a logistical brain in mind at least for a small part of the time. Unfortunately for me, this is not my strong point and I just started recording whenever and wherever I could. Some of the early recordings were at home, some in a rehearsal room at Basement Studios in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, and then subsequently in various hotel rooms whilst on tour. Creatively this was a lot of fun and added a lot of dimension and restriction to the recording, but logistically trying to keep a thread of consistency proved a challenge!

  At the same time I also love working with orchestras. There is a quality that still has not been quite realised by sound libraries and AI that orchestra’s can produce. I feel like this is why many of the great modern soundtracks still use real orchestras. So I got in contact with the wonderful Arnema orchestra in Porto, Portugal, and worked closely with Ian Dean who guided me through the whole process of working with them (including the mixing). This added a whole new layer, or a whole set of new layers to these pieces of music and realised a bit of a childhood dream at the same time.

Here is a brief guide to how these five tracks were written.

UNDERGROUND

I am a big nature lover, the plant and animal kingdom is always a source of fascination and inspiration to me. I read Merlin Sheldrake’s book ‘Entangled Life’ on Mycelium for a theatre project that eventually went in a different direction, but for me this was a starting point of inspiration for this composition. The book “Explores how fungi shape our world, from enabling life on land to creating medicines and breaking down pollutants, while revealing the vast underground networks connecting ecosystems”.

It’s incredibly bizarre to us in many ways and many of the concepts and research topics are relatively new, and for me it almost a feel of science fiction to it even though it is here on earth, and has been for a long time. 

The more I read about it, the more metaphors about connection kept springing to mind about connections, underground movements, the connection of humans to nature and even within our own bodies.

From this the track ‘Underground’ was born, which is the first piece on of the EP. 

The Call in the Mountains

I had established that I wanted to follow the themes of nature, the environment and the change that is occurring around us all the time. This piece initially began as ‘air’ in which of course I wanted to feature a wind instrument as the lead. The theme of air in this case, turned more into wind, in particular the wind that travels through mountain passages, hot, cold and always changing the weather. I chose the quena as the lead instrument, mainly because I really like that instrument, but also as it is a very much ‘mountain’ associated instrument (from the Andes). I initially was not going to record it myself, being a bit too much of a beginner on the instrument. However after a lot of practise I decided to go for the challenge. It was also a joy to record it over the string and woodwind performance of the Arnema Orchestra. 

Fires and Floods

The title of this piece is fairly self explanatory! If you read or watch the news, you probably read many times a year and more and more often about fires and floods. They are devastating in their way but also make room for new life and new beginnings. This piece is that delicate balance between the end of one thing and the beginning of another, and the forces that happen in that interim period. 

Musically it features the Trumpet and the Bouzouki, both instruments I perform a lot with live on stage that I wanted to give a space here in this EP. Having played them a lot on stage over the last years however, it was a challenge to make them shine in a different way as a recorded piece of music and stick within this natural universe I was trying to create. Both have been recorded a bit creatively, especially the trumpet which in some places I layered up more than four times, which I call the ‘Block of Trumpet’!

Un’Onda

I am a big fan of water, (who isn’t) but also in a way that I like to be near the sea, or a lake or river. I think I am also subconsciously scared of it. The reason I think this is that I have had a recurring dream for years of being either caught up in a tsunami or mass flood, or being stranded somewhere by one. I connected this to nature, as it is after all, very much a part of nature.

‘Un’Onda’ is another ‘water based’ piece of music and it is my first ever song I written and sang in Italian. (It is the only song I have written and sung in Italian), and comes directly from a version of this dream which is quite surrealist, where I am stranded somewhere remote after everything and everyone has been engulfed by water, and I am left only with a strange note. The dream is not scary and it comes in many forms, but there is always a flood and and I am always left upon a tiny piece of land, or a small boat (or once a train carriage that was floating in the sea).

The reason I decided to do this in Italian was not to make my life even more difficult, but because these dreams I have often originate from me being in Italy somewhere, and sometimes, now I have a learnt a bit of Italian, the dialogue is in Italian. Again, I initially didn’t want it to be me that sings it, but in the end I enjoyed the challenge, especially delving into the more precise pronounciations.

When the Water Came

Water like us can be so calm and lovely, but like us, it can also be furious and destructive and unpredictable.  This is where this track was inspired, from the movement of water and particularly in it’s unpredictability, which is very much something that can also be related to all of our ‘real lives’.

This is probably, if I had to pick, my favourite track on this EP. It starts from a ripple of water somewhere out to sea, that becomes a wave that travels towards the land becoming a force of nature.

I recorded all the drum kit for this EP at Piccolo Studio in the 17th Arrondissement of Paris with a friend and colleague, Xavier. We had a lot of fun at the end of this track as it becomes more and more raucous and aggressive. 

The piece starts from a tranquil place, almost minimalistic in style and was inspired by the stillness of water, containing only simple ripples. However, these build and build and turn into waves that travel great distances and at great force. The music flows in a similar way and builds, morphs and swells into something quite different to what we start with.

Release date: June 12, 2026

Produced by: Ian Dean and Alex Paton
Compostion: Alex Paton
Mixed by: Ian Dean
Mastering: Clara Araújo, Knurl Mastering
Orchestra: Arnema Orchestra
Drums: Xavier Desandre
All ofther instruments and programming: Alex Paton
Artwork: Caroline Ayrault

With thanks to, Arda Recorders (orchestra recording) / Piccolo Studios Paris (drum recording) / Nayo Ulloa (quena lessons) / Iginia Barretta (translation help and Italian pronunciuation).