Lucy Railton: The Physicality of Sound
On leaving the classical world behind, working as a session musician and her new solo cello album on Ideologic Organ
Lucy Railton is a British cellist and composer that has carved out a unique artistic space for herself over the past two decades.
Classically trained, she has been working across electroacoustic, avant-garde, drone and electronic music. She’s worked in film, theater and dance, curated festivals and concerts, and played with everyone from Kit Downes to Kali Malone. Eclectic labels like Modern Love, PAN and GRM/Editions Mego have released her solo works.
In 2023, she was featured on Malone’s organ epic Does Spring Hide Its Joy alongside Stephen O’Malley. During a gig with them in a Paris church, she found the perfect recording location for her own new solo recording, Blue Veil. This raw 40-minute cello piece in seven “phases”, composed in just intonation, just saw a release on O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ label.
I spoke to Railton, who’s currently based in Berlin, about her musical biography, the compositional ideas behind Blue Veil, and why cellists always like to make fun of viola players.
You grew up in Devon, right?
That's right. Very beautiful nature, big hills and open space.
What are some of your earliest music memories?
My dad was an organ player in the church. My family was not religious at all, it was a job. I used to sing in the choir, so I'd be in the church from a very young age, next to the organ, surrounded by singers. It was quite a big church, and the organ, obviously, was massive. Being completely submerged in sound from a very young age has been informative for me and how I enjoy experiencing music. I like things to be physical. I’m sure it comes from that base, not the music so much, but the identity of the sound.
How was it to grow up with five older brothers?
It’s funny you know that. Well, three of them are from another marriage, so I didn't grow up with them, but my other two brothers were very protective and made me take my life quite seriously, because they were always concerned, so I was feeling like I needed to make sure everything was actually okay, because they were keeping an eye on me. They’re lovely though – no problems, no bullying, no fighting. I’m very close to my brothers.
Apart from your dad, was it a musical family?
Yeah, everyone is quite creative and performing in some way, either as a musician or an athlete. This idea of discipline and delivery and performance and dedication is very much a family character. Two of my brothers were semi-professional motorbike racers. I don't understand bikes at all, but I completely understand this adrenaline rush, the competition, just how we get excited around speed and sound. Those superbikes are very loud, and there are massive crowds, thousands of people watching.
You decided for a rather niche audience by making experimental music.
Sure, but I don't think that was ever really an option as an instrumentalist. Unless you go into pop music, you're not going to play to thousands of people. I decided not to do traditional classical music very early on. But that was because I didn't connect with the personalities of the people who are involved in that world.
It's quite a hierarchical world, right?
Yeah, it's not very friendly, not very collective. It has much to do with status and class and money. Being around improvisers, experimental and electronic musicians, I just felt like I was involved with a much more diverse group of people. That's really what drives me, who I meet through making music. Early on I realized I wasn't going to do classical music, so I started to build my musical activities around these smaller clubs and unusual venues. I used to run a music festival in London and [curate] a concert series. It was all about finding this space for something that doesn't already exist, and trying to fill it. That's also how I make music. But I wasn't conscious of any of this. It was a very natural way to come out of school in my 20s, just developing with a rich community of musicians in London, people from all genres, all places in the world. It wasn't a strong decision, it just all fell into place.
I always find it interesting to explore why people chose their instrument. What attracted you to the cello initially?
My mom and my brothers played the cello. I was six years old when I started playing. It was about being a part of what everyone else was doing. I loved the sound, and I loved the fact that it was a really big object, something I could carry. Because my family's so musical, it was a very natural transition.
I spoke to the violist Whitney Johnson about this. Are you aware of her work?
I'm about to start working with her in the summer! We’re going to record some of Sarah Davachi’s music, together with another violist.
Amazing. Well, it was interesting to hear from her about the dynamics within string sections. She said she often gravitated towards other violists, because she felt it was a certain type of people – her people.
It sounds ridiculous, but it's very true. If you've been doing this kind of thing every day, all your life, as a discipline, then it becomes who you are. If you meet a cellist, it's very likely that you've had a similar journey. You played the same music, you had the same issues, you've gone to the same instrument dealers, you've bought the same strings, so you have loads in common, also in terms of personalities. Cellists tend to be quite social people, because we're not the virtuoso people in the group. The violinists have all the hard stuff to do. Cellists are the support network. My partner is a bass player, and he's the extreme version of that – super solid, supportive, reliable person. You need to have that kind of mentality to play that role. Cellists generally are quite relaxed, because we have less to do than violinists. And the viola players are special people, they're likely outcasts. They get lots of jokes. I still make jokes about the viola players. It's very childish, but they are hilarious.
Why do they get all the jokes?
Those instruments… they don’t really work properly. (laughs) That sounds kind of bad. I love the viola when it's played well, but that's kind of rare.
So you decide for the cello, you practice, you get formal training. You probably have this idea of becoming an orchestra musician. When did you decide that you don't want to go down the classical route?
I was studying in America, at the New England Conservatory in Boston, and they have an amazing improvisation department. It's called contemporary improvisation, which means nothing, but it's not belonging to a particular genre. It's not classical and it’s not jazz, it’s everything in between, from Indian classical music to electronic, electroacoustic, live composition, stuff like that. I felt very free because I was given a chance to have my own voice. I thought: Okay, I'm best when I'm speaking my ideas and I'm stressed when I have to deliver the ideas of a dead man, normally. From there, I played much more contemporary music, which is still other people's work, but it's a bridge towards electronic composition, which I ended up doing. I was about 20 when I realized that I didn't ever have to audition for an orchestra, and I felt very good about that.
After coming back from Boston, you already mentioned that you worked as a musician in London throughout your 20s.
Yeah, I did. I was running this concert series at Café Oto called Kammer Klang. We probably did eight shows a year of various contemporary music with improvisation and experimental stuff. I was also doing lots of music for film and television and pop music, literally as a session musician. It was a job, something you had to do to survive, but I loved it. I still do a lot of recording for people. It's a very specific discipline, and I've met many great people through it. It's a good muscle to develop, but also a great way to see how other people are working. Even in the pop music space, [the artists I worked with] really loved what they're doing, and it's great to be able to provide them with the cello solo that they've always wanted, or the string quartet that's made their track work. I love contributing to people's ideas.
You said you did it to make ends meet. How did you decide which projects to take on?
I've done lots of projects for no money. So much of my work has been because of the people, the quality of the project, and it always, in the end, leads to something else. I’ve done a lot of work for musicians who were at the beginning of their career and didn’t have much budget, and then it took off and became a five-year project that grows and turns into something more sustainable. If I can afford to, I just trust that when the quality of the work is really good, then it will, in the end, be worthwhile doing creatively. I've been very lucky having a very diverse range of projects. I work with dancers to theater and film and bands and my own solo stuff, which I’m doing more of now, but I’ve been doing this for 20 years.
How would you describe the role of Blue Veil within your discography?
It feels like a homecoming, like I'm coming back to myself. My discography has been quite electronic-heavy and explorative. I've entered new worlds with each of those records. But Blue Veil is an acoustic cello record. There's a tiny bit of electronics, just a few sine waves. It's been recorded amazingly by Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley. It's been mixed and mastered fantastically [by Marta Salogni and Rashad Becker]. This is exactly how I sound when I play cello. I've always been quite frustrated with recordings of myself or other cellists. You can tell that they're on a stage, or that they're at some distance in the room. I really wanted to give the listener my immersive experience of playing cello so they can get closer to the music. For me, this is exactly how I hear everything all the time. Blue Veil is how I play when I practice, which I do every day. It's not a new place for me, but it's new for everyone to hear this side of me.
Why didn't you showcase that side before?
This is just how I developed my cello practice in the last five years. Before that, I think I was very keen to be more explorative, technically, with electronic production. I feel annoyed to say this, because it's so predictable, but the pandemic stopped all of this music-making in the normal way, and I played the cello a lot by myself, calmed down a bit and got into slower forms of music.
You've referred to Blue Veil as a composition. I wasn't really sure if it was mainly improvised, or rather: composed in the moment, or written out beforehand.
I have a fixed harmonic structure that is written down in a score, but I’m open as to how I'm going to move through those chords. I can play some of those pieces very quickly or with more space, depending on the acoustics I'm working with, because I'm listening to what's happening in the overtones and how the intonation is shifting, and that informs how I progress. So it's not improvised in the traditional sense, but it's composition with an open structure. In every different space, you get very different results. It affects the tempo, how you move through the chords, what dynamic you play, how you phrase things, how many breaks you give, if you add lots of space.
That sounds like when in modal jazz musicians were starting to improvise within the given harmonic framework, but without a set duration for their improvisations.
Yeah, you're right. It's exactly that. We have an idea, a set of chord progressions to move through, but we have our own autonomy to go through it, and that's very freeing. It's the same principle. You know, I play with people most of the time, which I love doing, but you also depend on them, and when I'm playing on my own, I can just make all my own decisions. No one else is in charge of the way I do things. In jazz, your emotional connection is going to influence how you work through the material. So yeah, it's free in that way. But it’s obviously not jazz. I know you're not saying it is. It's working with that principle of openness within a structure.
It was recorded in a church in Paris, right?
Yeah, Église du Saint-Esprit. Stephen O’Malley and Hampus Lindvall have been organizing concerts there for some time. It's still a working Catholic church, but it also has an art community identity. It's a very unusual church, and it's open to people to come and do various projects there. I did a concert with Kali and Stephen there. It’s an incredible, spectacular space. There's concrete everywhere, so it's got this very intense sound that's very appealing for musicians like us.
Could you try to explain why you compose in just intonation? What does that alternative tuning allow you to do?
What appeals to me is the way that the frequencies vibrate against each other. In just intonation, you can write very specific, let's just call them chords, which will generate very specific rhythms, frictions, tensions and densities. And the cello is such a physical body. For me, it's all about how I feel the instrument. It’s like standing next to a guitar amp. You get this sensation of the sound becoming physical. That's always been a big part of my sonic world, so I feel very drawn to music that enables me to experience that.
The piece Blue Veil is guided not only by my compositional ideas, which are about melody, harmony and structure, but also by the physical outcome, the way it's felt. It might start very pure and still, and it will shift into a frictional, pulsating block of sound, because I'm playing a different chord, which is full of tension, and that then becomes a physical experience. I enjoy that a lot. You know, think about family members being motorbike racers. So the physicality of the sound is what draws me most to just intonation.
Experiencing large soundsystems is a similar physical experience. As you’re from England, I have to ask, were you ever into club music?
Yeah, of course. Drum’n’bass was the sound of my teenage years. (laughs) My brothers all were into DJ’ing. I lived in Brixton for nearly eight years. Soundsystems are a big part of British culture. I'm really into soundsystems because of the physicality, and I've always loved music festivals for that reason. So yes, that comes from my upbringing, for sure.
You've mentioned in earlier interviews that you've been influenced by the production techniques of hip-hop and R&B. Care to elaborate?
Well, that was more about the aesthetic. To make my previous records, I used an SP-303 and other quite cheap equipment – it’s not that cheap anymore, but you know, not the super audiophile stuff. And I love the sound of vinyl and its artifacts and that, for me, is coming from hip-hop. On a production level – looping cuts, hard edits, that kind of stuff. I have very diverse interests, I appreciate everything, not just hardcore experimental stuff. I've really never been particularly snobby about the music that I listened to. That's enabled me to feel confident going into many different areas. I don't have an issue with making very diverse music, even on the same album, because it's all part of my world.
Lucy Railton’s Blue Veil is out now on Ideologic Organ.