Tone Glow 109: Lucy Railton
Tone Glow 109: Lucy Railton
An interview with the British cellist & composer about improvisation, her childhood experiences with the physicality of sound, the 'Quake' soundtrack's sound design, and her new album 'Corner Dancer'
Lucy Railton
Lucy Railton is a British cellist, composer, and curator whose practices show a deep consideration for the physicality of sound. Her works span electroacoustic practices to field recordings, explorations in just intonation to drone. Her debut album, Paradise 94, arrived in 2018 after a string of collaborations and session work with a variety of artists including Mica Levi, Beatrice Dillon, Kit Downes, and Peter Zinovieff. In 2020 she released the commissioned piece Forma on Portraits GRM. More recently, she played on Kali Malone’s Does Spring Hide Its Joy and collaborated with Michiko Ogawa on Fragments of Reincarnation. Her new solo album, Corner Dancer, will be released via Modern Love on November 10th. The lead single for the album, “Blush Study,” can be heard here. Joshua Minsoo Kim talked with Railton on October 8th, 2023 via Zoom to discuss her new album, her musical upbringing, and the freedom she found in improvisation.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Your new album’s called Corner Dancer (2023). I read somewhere that you danced when you were a child or teenager. Is this true?
Lucy Railton: Wow. Where did you read that? It’s true, but I didn’t know that was common knowledge (laughter).
I was doing some research. Can you tell me about how those dance lessons were formative for you?
With regards to the record, Corner Dancer has many meanings that we can talk about. But it actually didn’t come from my position as a dancer. Since I was like four years old, I was dancing—just in a local dance class—until I was about 16. It was a really regular part of my week, and mostly a really important social experience. You form really good friendships and you learn to trust your dance partners, your body, and understand how to take creative instruction. It’s great for memory, and it’s amazing for your sense of achievement. You get instant success in some ways.
Right. You’re able to do specific things and see incremental progress.
And that’s a real confidence builder when you’re young. I was fairly confident anyway, but I think all of that interaction and focus on performance, or focus on learning forms and patterns and structures and choreography, is very similar to music. Obviously, music was a massive part of my life and always has been. Music was always top priority, but the dance aspect was very regular in my life, though i don’t think it has consciously influenced my work as an adult. With the title, Corner Dancer, it was more about a sense of captivity within a very precious or excited energy, depending on how you would experience that position—probably in a dark room in a corner. A lot of this music is really about the tension of silence and the tension of scale of the smallest of things, and how huge amounts of energy can be gathered within these very confined, minute shapes and forms.
I remember when I heard your solo debut, Paradise 94 (2018), the first track reminded me of Chris Watson’s El Tren Fantasma (2011), and then I became familiar with your music with Catherine Lamb, Johnny Chang, Rebecca Lane, and everything from Another Timbre and that whole world, which I’ve loved for a long time. I think a lot about the importance of silence in that label’s lineage. It’s interesting to see these two camps merging—this importance of silence along with the darker electronic side. It makes sense that you’re on Modern Love despite the variety of music you make. What brought you from contributing to so many different projects, to playing on releases by artists like Mica Levi and Bat for Lashes, to releasing a debut album under your own name?
Those collaborations, except for the one with Kit Downes, were a part of my previous life, living in London as a session musician. That was a huge part of my life. That’s why my discography is bizarre and big, because I’ve been hired by record labels to play cello on tons and tons of records, as a job. It’s been really useful and really informative, but I didn’t take part in those recordings as an artist—I was a cellist. But through doing a lot of that work, and collaborating a lot across genres throughout my 20s, I’ve been able to experience how artists really work.
It’s complicated because I’m classically trained, and it’s not normal that you would have such a strong sense of identity as a classical musician. The artistic point of having an autonomous voice came quite late for me; I was maybe in my mid-20s when I started to think about what I really wanted to be saying with my own music. This really came through collaborating with others, because of my desire to work with others, or because I’d been invited, or just because of my curiosity for all kinds of different art practices. Things just evolved quite naturally. There wasn’t really a point where I said, “I’m gonna start doing this.” More was required of me within collaborations, and then there was a point when I said, “I want to make my own record, and not be this serial collaborator,” which is something I’ve been criticized for in the past.
Why criticized?
Because it can be a bit disorienting.
Do you agree with that criticism, that you were a serial collaborator?
I supposed it’s factually correct (laughter). I’m absolutely in the world of diverse creative input and output. I wouldn’t be comfortable doing just one type of thing. You mentioned working with Catherine Lamb and the repertoire within the just intonation canon, and that’s an essential part of my creative work, but I couldn’t do just that. I’ve always been curious, as most artists are, but I’ve had the luxury of being able to reach out and invite and form really strong relationships with artists from all kinds of practices. Especially because I was also curating a festival in London and curating a concert series; it was very natural for me to keep exploring. I think making your own records becomes a time when you see what’s there in that moment, what’s left from all of this experience that you’ve had. Paradise 94 and some of my other efforts have really been about that accumulation of knowledge and creativity and experimentation. That’s how I see making records, as a kind of “where are we at now?” documentation.
Just for clarity, do you mind sharing how old you are?
I’m 37.
You mentioned that you didn’t have a sense of who you are as an artist until your mid-20s. I’m curious if you felt like you knew what it meant to be an artist when you were younger, whether it was from watching your father as a conductor, or whether it was from your dance instructor.
Yeah, absolutely. I had really good examples growing up. I grew up in the countryside, not in London, but in a very creative part of the South West of England, where they have an arts college, a music college, and festivals. So since I was really young, I was always in this concert culture, with festivals or gigs, going up to London all the time to see big shows. Most of my family are musicians with various interests. Whether it’s hip-hop, R&B, classical music, or electronic music, art was always really prioritized growing up, in our experience of life. I’ve always been super engaged with popular culture and public performance, and I’ve been very aware of people who really possessed strong artistic personalities. I was really lucky to be around a lot of those people when I was younger, but I never particularly thought that was my direction. I really did want to be an orchestral musician, weirdly, since I was very young. But that changed when I studied in Boston for a year, and improvisation became a part of my life. I realized that the ethics of classical music were not for me. Improvisation kind of broke that and changed my direction.
Who are the people who had a strong artistic identity from your early life?
I can think of many examples, but my cello teacher was a really fantastic, inspirational, and accomplished musician. He was retired when I was learning from him. But he had an amazing career as a cellist—Michael Evans. You just know when someone has the kind of weight of artistic strength. I think as a child I was very drawn to these personalities and I still am. I’ve gotten myself in trouble for that as well.
How so?
Running a music festival. We also would invite these big speakers and as you know, the saying goes, “never meet your heroes.” We met lots of heroes in that experience, which is fantastic, but I think admiring the icon can be a tricky dynamic.
Could you talk about your parents? Do you feel like there are aspects of who your parents are that you see in yourself today?
Other than being the spitting image of my mom when she was my age, she was a music therapist for children with special needs, she’s retired now. There was always a sense of being very tactile with sound, or the idea of experiencing sound as therapeutic practice. I don’t technically use sound in that sense, as a kind of therapy, but of course I’m working with sound in equal measure to music. I would sometimes go with my mom to work, and the idea was to experience sound as a physical sensation. A lot of the therapy is for children who can’t see or hear very well, so the vibration and character of sound is how they’re experiencing the material. Maybe I wasn’t conscious of that when I was younger, but that’s absolutely stayed with me. I’m very focused on the physicality of sound material.
Did she specifically instruct you to listen in this way?
Well, she never really practiced work on her own children, as is often the case, but I went to work with her quite often. I was witness to a lot of her classes. I experienced it through her work with other children. And the community I grew up in was very much about community music-making using percussion instruments that you’re not necessarily familiar with, as a way of communicating through objects or material.
My dad was a very accomplished conductor and performer. He died 10 years ago. He was an old father. He was born in the late ’20s. When I was growing up, he’d partly finished his career but, as an older musician, was a community educator, and was all about getting people who didn’t have skill or facility with instruments—in the professional sense—to make music together. He did music appreciation classes as well, and community orchestras, community choirs. He was really heralded for his contribution to the community through music. That was so exciting. It also meant that I could be, like, a semi-professional from a very young age, taking part in these groups. That was an amazing learning curve for me. But it was also just being around people who weren’t jaded like some professional musicians can be. They were there for the pure passion and love of the music and the experience of being together. That’s really what I look for, as well.
I’m in the process of reviewing an album from a folk artist and they were talking about how they miss how folk music was a thing that people did just because they wanted to hear music, before you had the radio or could buy records, and how there were communities built from that. That’s so wonderful you had that growing up.
Definitely. This wasn’t even really folk music but just a very packed community of people interested in music. It’s very unique. Just south of Dartmoor. Moving to London, as a late teenager, and then being thrown into school, you’re just fully submerged. I’ve come out of that submersion ever since, really.
Submergence into what?
Into a full musical identity. My whole life is really music. Everything I do. It feels strange to be in my apartment with the washing on, because I haven’t got that practice of just being normal, unfortunately. I wish I could find a better balance sometimes.
What leads you to crave that balance?
It’s really important to take breaks, everyone needs to do that. I have quite a busy life. It’s like I said—with this mega collaborative lifestyle, it can be disorientating. In one way, I love the diversity and the traveling and the quantity of experiences, and I’m so thankful that I can do that, but it is disorientating. Talking about my music is something I’m not practiced at. It’s hard to really talk about it because I feel like it encompasses so many things, so much of my daily life. It doesn’t feel particularly defined. Making records is an attempt to make some kind of definition of the mess.
You mentioned that your mother’s work as a musical therapist helped you understand sound as a physical sensation. I’m curious if you understood sound as a physical sensation through your experiences as a dancer.
When I finished this record, I thought this would be great music for dance. I imagined a stage. I hope that doesn’t sound too arrogant, but I could really imagine bodies with this music. The cello is also an incredibly physical object. It touches my chest, it touches my thighs, the vibrations come into my torso. Beyond that cliché of how the cello and the body look similar—forget that, that’s not important—it’s the actual vibration of the instrument. Unless you play it yourself, I don’t think people realize how strong that is as a sensory experience. It really influences how I play and I’m almost too conscious of it sometimes. I’m sure that, having had experience as a dancer when I was younger, the connection between music and body is very natural to me. I’ve worked with [choreographer and dancer] Akram Khan for about three years. He did an Indian classical Kathak part of the show, and our musical gestures were following the gestures of his body.
I feel very drawn to the body’s movement as a guiding force for creativity. My body moves in quite extreme ways to generate sound, and I’m particularly focused on that as a performer. That’s why improvisation makes a lot more sense to me than playing repertoire, because I’m not able to locate the physicality within my body when I’m playing repertoire sometimes. It’s not impossible, but it’s a much harder thing to achieve when you’re playing somebody else’s ideas. It’s much harder to embody it than with your own ideas.
Do you mind talking about your experiences of improvisation in Boston? Do you remember a moment where you realized that that was the thing you need to be focused on?
Yeah, I do remember that moment. I remember thinking, “Oh, I never have to audition for an orchestra, thank god.” (laughter). I thought that was what I was aiming for. I had an amazing teacher called Anthony Coleman, a piano player at NEC, and amazing students. The school’s really fantastic. It was literally a key that unlocked freedom for me. It’s kind of hard to explain unless you’ve experienced rigorous training, like you would learning an instrument like cello. I’d been doing that kind of training since I was about seven, having never played a note that wasn’t written down before. To do that for the first time was a mind-blowing experience. It was through this, meeting all these improvisers, where there was a much flatter sense of hierarchy within the people I was playing with. That was also super appealing to me. I know hierarchy is never quite flat, but in contrast to classical performance and structures, the way in which you can improvise with others across genres and with various instruments outside of the classical tradition was super exciting to me. I wanted to actually engage with people from jazz and from improvised music and from other musical cultures. With improvisation, it’s possible to do that, but you’re quite restrained within the classical framework.
I’m wondering what it was like for you to return to repertoire after spending time in this improvisation world. You’ve done pieces by Bach, Scelsi, and Messiaen.
It’s an interesting question. Honestly, it makes it a bit harder to go back to repertoire once you’ve broken free from those frameworks—for me. But really amazing performers who play repertoire are able to also find their voice within other people’s music. That’s really a gift. I don’t think I had that. I don’t think I could be that generous with myself, for other people’s work. In whatever form of music I’m involved with, I’ve always been met with risk; I was constantly dealing with resistance, even if that’s with myself. It’s a constant negotiation of how much of yourself you give up, and how much you need to protect yourself. You have to be able to deliver someone else’s ideas in a way that is excellent, but such that you’re not sacrificing too much of your own identity. There’s not much music, in my opinion, where I can achieve that.
I play this very long piece by Morton Feldman, Patterns in a Chromatic Field. It’s an 80-minute piece and a piece that you have to consume completely. You really have to embody that music; it’s too long and too complex to not have it deeply ingrained in yourself. It’s a piece that I’ve spent years working on and I’ve been performing it for a long time now. That doesn’t feel like a sacrifice to me, because the materials are completely in line with the aesthetics that I enjoy working in myself. It’s not a virtuosic demonstration of flamboyant ecstasy—things that are just not particularly me. It has its moments, but for some reason I can make a deal with that piece.
But Scelsi, for example, I would find really challenging to play now because there is so much restriction. It’s improvised music. Essentially, those were improvisations that were transcribed by somebody else. To perform someone else’s improvisation, when I can improvise myself… it feels like those are very complex layers to understand. But the Scelsi recording was done about 12 years ago, I think, and I was in a different space then. The Bach, as well, was really heavily constructed through the lens of sonic complexity. It wasn’t purely a traditional Bach interpretation. We had a lot of discussions about the crystallization of chords and things like that. It was really interesting from that perspective.
You were on the Taku Sugimoto album, Octet (2021). What’s it like to play with someone like that?
Taku gives loads of space for the musicians to be themselves, within a loose framework. For me, that works perfectly because you’re collaborating with him and his ideas, but he gives you free rein to interpret them as you like. We actually did a live recording where we recorded the soundcheck, the test run, and it was kind of shaky and people were unsure what we were doing. And then we did the performance and Taku said, “That was too perfect. We’re gonna go for the run-through.” He wasn’t interested in people performing well, he was interested in the questions that we had and the musical pressures of uncertainty, the way that this energy influenced the way we played. You can feel that, absolutely. A shaky, uncertain performance has a character to it. I really respect that. I feel the same about lots of my music, too. The record is rough in many ways and you can hear very strong edit points. I’m really into that error, that failure—I’m not interested in it being a very perfect clean string of pieces.
Is there a moment on the new album where you felt like you were embracing that sort of error or chance element?
Most of the tracks live in that world. There’s lots of repetition as well, and not much material. I think of Paradise 94 as a kind of maximal record—more is more. I think that’s symptomatic of it being my first solo release. I had a lot to say, a lot to get rid of. Corner Dancer is more about understanding the ways in which materials relate to each other, and playing with much less material. It’s about recycling and re-exploring those pieces as much as I could before moving on to something else, not doing this constant development process.
I love “Suzy in Spectrum,” when you aren’t playing and you can still hear all the sounds that are in the space. I think about 5 S-Bahn (2020) as well, where you’re recording the trains around you, or the sense of space in the cathedral on Subaerial (2021).
I’m very interested in space. I wanted to record a lot more on location. There are many locations on this record. One is part of a live concert at Cafe OTO that has the fan that we hear in “Suzy in Spectrum.” It was a commission to take part in a series. The recording of the fan on that track came from a performance which was a dedication to my auntie Suzy. The cello in that piece, with the breath, is very much, “inhale, exhale.” That’s how I think that’s how I play, really. When I talk about being physical with the instrument, it’s because I have to breathe in certain ways and to take pauses. The repetition, the up and down bow of that piece, the way that the chords shift microtonally and generate a different spectrum of harmonics and colors in this sonic spectrum—I just wanted that to be peaceful. It’s disorientating, in its repetition, and that’s definitely a theme that I’m very interested in.
Do you mind talking about your auntie Suzy?
Sadly, she worked all her life with the ambition to retire. She worked three jobs and never took breaks and just about got a house when she was in her 60s or late 50s. She had a gorgeous garden and wanted to have a great retirement, finally, and just live her life freely. And then she got cancer and didn’t get a chance to really live that. So that’s the tragedy around that. But she was fantastic. No kids, no partner, just a strong, independent woman. She just really didn’t get enough time.
Do you have a favorite memory with her that comes to mind?
She smoked a lot of cigarettes (laughter). She was a leopard-print-bikini kind of woman with strong nail polish and cigarettes. Many moments like that, in the sun. She was glamorous, in a leopard-print-bikini kind of way.
You were speaking earlier about how each of these albums is a way for you to define your life as an artist at a certain point in time. Between Paradise 94 and this album, you’ve had multiple collaborations—RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer (2020) with Peter Zinovieff, the aforementioned Subaerial with Kit Downes, Fragments of Reincarnation (2023) with Michiko Ogawa. How do you feel like these experiences have shaped the understanding of yourself that appears on this record?
There are many, many, many factors. Working with Peter Zinovieff, who sadly passed away two years ago—he was a man who absolutely pushed for the impossible. That was what our collaboration was all about. The reason why we worked so well together was because I was very up for that challenge. I have a lot of energy for difficult things, but in the last few years, I maybe have less energy for things that really push me. I don’t know if that’s a pandemic thing, or that I’m a bit older. Not to reject the work I did with Peter, but in contrast to that kind of exhaustion of energy towards making something that’s super progressive, I needed to take a quieter route to this exploration of radical ideas. I hope that it’s possible to have radical ideas within a small scale and a quiet frame. That’s something I was thinking about. RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer was a kind of electroacoustic explosion. It was very virtuosic, on my part. I’ve always been really engaged with the virtuosity of simple sounds, or the virtuosity of silence, if that can even be a thing.
But when I talk about virtuosity, I talk about energy and how it might captivate us. With 5 S-Bahn, I think I wrote in my notes about the virtuosity of those trains. There were such incredibly complex sounds recorded from these trains going past. Of course, nature is incredibly complex. But I’m also zooming in on archival sounds that I have or that I’ve recorded especially for the record, finding their most simple form. A big focus of mine is the kind of negative space that we have from the structure and the silence, the energy. But that’s because I’m a performer. As you are about to go on stage, all the silence in performance, the energy of being in the room with people, of having people watching you, being on stage with other people or being on your own, that kind of sick silence that we experience and the energy that’s held in that silence—I’m really drawn to that as a human being, in all aspects of of my daily life. That naturally became a feature of this record, probably because I’ve had quite a musically chaotic output in the past. I really wanted to kind of slow down and find that space.
Was it hard to shift into this different mode?
Not really. I’d say it was natural. I didn’t sit down and think, “I’m gonna make a record now.” I just made music as I was inspired to at various stages throughout the last year. I found myself keep coming back to silence, or the tail end of sound, the distance of sound, the deep perspectives of sonic space.
I can see that. On “Standing Cadence,” the existence of a loop reorients your mind to think about what the sound is, and the things around the sound. I wanted to ask about “Blush Study,” the last track on the album. You mentioned your siblings are into R&B and hip-hop, and I know you had Liv.e on your Boomkat Top 10 one year.
She’s the best.
She’s amazing. When I heard “Blush Study,” I thought, “Oh, this is Lucy’s R&B track, what’s going on here?” (laughter). Could you talk to me about this track?
It does sound new, I can understand that. I’d say R&B and hip-hop were more influential to me than, say, musique concrète. I listened to those genres intensely as a young person and still do. In terms of production, they informed me a lot more. I use similar production tools, SP-303s, for example, MPCs. I hope the connection there has more to do with production than content (laughter).
How has listening to R&B and hip-hop informed your approach to producing, or thinking about your music in general?
I think it’s just energy, liveness. That’s commercial music, it’s only commercial. The format is to be brilliant, to be impressive, to be sparkling, and I’m hooked on that. I’m not academic when it comes to sound practices or composition, I’m much more intuitive. I would just have to trust what excites me and not think of things as cerebral experiments. I think I know what excites me because of that long standing engagement with popular music. I’m not in any way trying to make hip-hop or R&B. That’s a stretch, of course.
“Blush Study” is a collaboration with my husband, who is an amazing jazz musician but also has similar influences. The whole record had been quite restrained. I think of it as an energetic restraint. I really felt like something needed to kind of lift off. That’s what “Blush Study” is for me. It’s a dive into flourishing—this idea of coming out emotionally, the way that when you blush, you don’t have control over your sensorial reaction. It’s completely embodied. Your skin changes color, you completely reveal yourself. It can be embarrassing, or it can be vulnerable, or it can be euphoric, or moving, or exciting. That’s really all it is. It’s just an unveiling of a huge system. That’s how it starts. It starts with whipping the horsehair of my bow. It’s the most physical performance I’ve done. I did it in Japan earlier this year, and when you amplify it, it makes an incredible sound, as you can hear on the record. It was almost a dance. I was doing these kinds of crosses with my arms and huge gestures on stage, and there’s hair flying left to right in diagonal lines. That’s the kind of ear teaser on that track. For me, it’s so sensorily interesting to the ears.
I love that. What you said about blushing is really my favorite thing about music—there’s a physiological response it can have on you that you’re not in control of. Like, your heartbeat speeds up sometimes, even if you’re just passively listening to music. So much of your music has to do with this physicality.
It’s this heartbeat feeling. If I think about the first track… I don’t know if this is interesting to you, but I also played a lot of computer games when I was a kid. I have five older brothers, so computer games were in the house. I started playing Quake when I was much too young. I didn’t realize until last year, when I checked out the Quake soundtrack, that it has amazing music and sound design. I didn’t think about that when I was six. I think having this heart-in-your-throat, what’s-around-the-corner feeling—I know that sounds a bit cliché—but these kinds of jumpscare moments are such an adrenaline rush. I was such an adrenaline-rush kid. I loved getting thrown in the pool or going on fairground rides which were way too dangerous. I was too small for them. I was hooked on the adrenaline rush of experience. Those computer games, also, were just so exciting. The suspense in that. But now that I think of it, the sound world of those games was really impressive. It was all about the sound, the space, and what we were hearing around the corner. I think Corner Dancer has elements of that tension of suspense. The physiological response to music is just mind blowing to me. I don’t get what’s going on there, but I’m so glad that I have such a sensitivity to it, because it really makes me want to be involved in it all the time. It’s like an addiction.
You mentioned how you don’t approach things academically, how you’re more intuitive. You had that piece for GRM, Forma (2020), and they’re such an institution with so much history. Did you ever have some imposter syndrome with that?
Of course, naturally, I did feel partly inferior to the institution. But they’re inviting people who are outside of the institution so the commissions come with the knowledge that their commissioned artists are not coming from academic practices. I felt relaxed in that sense. I’m also confident in my process, thankfully. I seem to be sure of something, because I really feel it. That, to me, is more important than having a very intellectual approach to my creativity. I absolutely respect that as an approach, but it’s just not where I’ve come from. I have a lot of actual performance experience with the concrète world. I co-organized the Parmegiani festival when the festival started in London. It’s very much the world I’ve been interested in. So I understand it, but I don’t have to go through the same process to make my own work. I feel that coming from different angles is also interesting for that institution. They’ve really opened up in recent years to all starting points. Thankfully, I’m not super crushed by my lack of an academic approach… maybe I should be more. I have a Bachelor’s in cello performance, full stop. But really, I’ve been so lucky to have such strong and regular experiences that have had so much value for me as an artist finding my way.
Is there anything that you want to talk about that we didn’t get to today? Or a question you’ve always wanted to be asked in an interview?
That’s a nice question. Not particularly. I can’t think of anything now, but it’s nice of you to ask. We’ve had a really nice chat. I’m glad we covered so much ground.
There’s a question I always end my interviews with: Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
One thing I love about myself is that I can always smell a rat.
When does that come in handy?
When it comes to working out who’s bullshitting. In negotiating or understanding how people work in power structures. Life as a musician is all about navigating power structures, exploitation, and hierarchy. I think I have quite a good sense of who’s behaving badly. That’s served me well. So there’s something I can appreciate about myself. I don’t know that I love that about myself, but maybe I appreciate that. The question is funny, because artists already feel too self-important. Being interviewed by someone else is bizarre. I mean, I don’t think of myself as someone who people will interview. I’m really honored that you would. It’s already a lot to be making the record or to be talking about the record, but then to also say something you love about yourself is…
I just remembered that you love Sonia Malkine, is this correct?
I love Sonia Malkine.
Have you heard her radio broadcasts?
No.
There’s this one radio broadcast on YouTube where she talks about folk songs and then plays them herself. I’ll send it to you, it’s lovely. How did you first hear about her music? Was it the Folkways records?
That would be amazing. I think I was just introduced by a friend. I don’t know how she discovered her work. The Folkways records are the ones that I’m familiar with. Her voice… there’s just this physiological response I have to her voice and the way she plays. I know she’s also really important politically, but that hasn’t really influenced my appreciation of her. Sharing music, that’s the spirit. That’s how my dad worked, and I was influenced by this enormous generosity and desire to share and to get people feeling together, to get people seeing each other. I can’t really put my finger on why some people are more successful at that than others. When you find this, it’s so powerful. I’ve obviously only ever seen her on YouTube, but I’m incredibly moved when I see her play, especially when she’s playing the lute.
More information about Lucy Railton can be found at her website. Her new album, Corner Dancer, is out next month via Modern Love. Lucy Railton’s other music can be heard on Bandcamp.
Thank you for reading the 109th issue of Tone Glow. My condolences to all rats in Lucy’s presence.
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Great interview!