Railton, Lucy

Railton, Lucy

Corner Dancer

Modern Love

Lucy Railton completely upends parameters and expectations with a genius, multifaceted and uncompromisingly forward-facing new album, her second for Modern Love. Blurring distinctions between structured composition and more visceral modes of performance, ’Corner Dancer’ is full of bristling, charged energies, dissolving into sections of almost incomprehensible beauty. It’s one of the most quietly radical albums of the year, required listening if you’re into Maryanne Amacher, HTRK, François Bayle x Graham Lambkin. Following her 2018 solo debut ‘Paradise 94’, and countless collaborations in the time since - in duo with legendary EMS co-founder Peter Zinovieff (RIP), in trio with Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley, on stage with Patti Smith, plus appearances on recordings by Beatrice Dillon, Ellen Arkbro, Laurel Halo and Petter Eldh, Railton’s diverse musical circles here bleed into each other, revealing vulnerable and compelling emotional facets through a fluid mix of composition, and pure expression. 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 revel in the momentum of creation. The LP arcs from an opening sequence of ruptured asymmetries to something bordering a sort of dreampop sublime on ‘Blush Study’, the album’s...

Railton, Lucy

Paradise 94

Modern Love

"An astonishing solo debut by acclaimed cellist and composer Lucy Railton featuring one side of filigree, multi-layered autobiographical collage-work, the other of raw and phased cello glissandi. RIYL: Mark Leckey, Alvin Lucier, Beatrice Dillon, Nate Young, Valerio Tricoli, Popol Vuh...  Lucy Railton is a prolific performer who has appeared on countless recordings and collaborations with many important figures in contemporary music over the last few years. Paradise 94 is, remarkably, her solo debut - featuring archival, location and studio recordings which serve as a time capsule of all the myriad disciplines and influences that have brought her to this point in time. It both plays up to and shatters expectations of her music, which harnesses a duality of energies - acoustic/electronic, real/imagined, iconic/iconoclastic, pissed-off/romantic; out of place and androgynous - resulting in a visceral emotional insight and rare narrative grasp. Variegated, asymmetric, and located somewhere between her usual fields of exploration, Paradise 94 gives free reign to aspects of her creativity that have previously been subsumed into collaborative processes and interpretations of other composers’ work. Here, she’s free to probe, sculpt and layer her sounds through a much broader range of techniques and strategies, placing particular focus on non-linear structural arrangements and exploring the way her cello becomes perceptibly synthetic through collaging, rather than FX. At every turn Paradise 94 is bewilderingly unique. The A-side unfolds an oneiric, inception-like sequence traversing temporalities, timbres and tones from what sounds like a spectral ensemble playing on a traffic island in Pinnevik,...