British cellist-multi-instrumentalist Lucy Railton is known for her performances of classical and contemporary music as well for her solo or collaborative improvised work, with legendary EMS co-founder Peter Zinovieff, Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley, Kit Downes and on stage with Patti Smith. Her new solo album, Corner Dancer, allows her diverse musical circles to bleed into each other, creating an insoluble testament to a lifelong pursuit of sound. Railton plays here the cello, a medieval cello, the viella, violin, vintage synths like Buchla and Roland TR-808 drum machine,  a fan, horse hair whips, a handheld harp and her own voice, recording on eight tracks.

Corner Dancer trusts the subtle and meticulous post-production process to reveal vulnerable and compelling emotional facets through a fluid mix of composition, and pure sonic expression. This album pushes Railton out of her comfort zone, demands her to experiment with multiple approaches and unsettling, noisy sounds, lose her technical grip and embrace the imperfection, and eventually expose her fragile identities as a composer, improviser and sound artist.

The eight, pieces evoke mysterious and quite cinematic, dreamy and psychoacoustic soundscapes that patiently trace intimate and sometimes deviant shapes. These nuanced and ambiguous pieces have their own inner logic, in a way that collapses genre boundaries, and dismantles the structured composition from the inside out, in a way that bends through feeling, rather than design. Swedish bassist Petter Eldh, who collaborated before with Railton, adds synths and guitar to the last, the sublime and dramatic «Blush Study».

Corner Dancer is released as a vinyl LP with a download option. Its cover artwork by Rebecca Salvadori corresponds with her artwork for Railton’s debut solo album Paradise 94 (modern Love, 2018), both covers reflect vulnerable intimacy.

Eyal Hareuveni

Lucy Railton (cello, vocals, viella, violin, Buchla, Roland TR-808, electronics), Petter Eldh (Moog, guitar, Polysix)