Lucy Railton trusts in the nuance of her own creative instincts on an intensely modern, quietly radical second for Modern Love.
Following her 2018 solo debut Paradise 94' and countless collaborations in the time since, Railton's diverse musical circles here bleed into each other, creating an insoluble testament to a lifelong pursuit of sound. The multi-instrumentalist further articulates her own tonal register, embracing her solo strengths and trusting the process to reveal vulnerable and compelling emotional facets through a fluid mix of composition, and pure expression.
On the simplest level, Corner Dancer is a record that revels in the momentum of creation. Through a range of approaches, Railton gradually loosens her grip and allows her identities to expose themselves; cut to the bone, sinew and spirit of music making. Reaching outside tried and tested zones, she lands at a charged space characterised by unmetered pacing and an embrace of imperfection, using cello, viella (a medieval cello), Buchla, 808, a fan, synths, horse hair whips, a hand held harp and her own voice, across 8 tracks that arc from an opening sequence of ruptured asymmetries, to something bordering the sublime on »Blush Study'« the album's masterful closing flourish.
In between, Railton invokes psychoacoustic, heady spins and repetitions, while also allowing space for live performance, a mode to which she feels most attuned, and here captured best on Held in Paradise (her violin debut) and Rib Cage.
Collapsing boundaries, Railton harnesses a lifetime of formal training in order to patiently trace more ambiguous, intimate and sometimes deviant shapes, operating to a fuzzed logic that loops back to themes with an ingenious underlying dramaturgy of energies, dismantling the form from the inside out, in a way that bends through feeling, rather than design.
British cellist Lucy Railton is also a performer and co-founder of the London Contemporary Music Festival. Heiress of the
Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) (GRM) created by
Pierre Schaeffer in 1958, her experimental music with electroacoustic sounds is inspired by the work of
Beatriz Ferreyra,
Bernard Parmegiani, Iannis Xenakis, Guy Reibel and
François Bayle, after whom she pushes back the limits of normality.
Emerging from a long-term engagement with contemporary music, her work exists between modern instrumentalism, hard-edged electronic composition and expressive musique concrète.
Her expansive and variegated interests have led to countless collaborations and international appearances, inclulding with inventor and electronic music pioneer Peter Zinovieff, pianist Kit Downes, producer Beatrice Dillon and composer
Kali Malone. Railton regularly performs works by composers such as
Alvin Lucier, Iannis Xenakis,
Morton Feldman and
Pauline Oliveros.
See also
PDP III (Britton Powell, Lucy Railton & Brian Leeds / Huerco S).
