Peter Zinovieff & Lucy Railton - RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer 
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No: PAN 90
Release Date: 21 February 2020
Purchase: https://bit.ly/2RUVeF0

'RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer’ is a steeply adventurous, highly structured and rewarding electro-acoustic collaboration between pioneering British/Russian inventor and engineer Peter Zinovieff and preeminent cellist Lucy Railton.' 

The collaboration is notably issued as Peter Zinovieff’s first album and also becomes the follow-up to Lucy Railton’s acclaimed solo debut ‘Paradise 94’. It finds Zinovieff, co-founder of London’s influential EMS Synthesizer company and owner of the world’s first home computer, using custom computer software to create and orchestrate a “soft” version of Railton’s vast instrumental vocabulary, modelled from a large series of cello improvisations inspired by objects such as an Egyptian figure, pots, and old computer boards, as well as tales of pre-revolution Russia from his Grandfather. Railton added solo cello to the manipulated results, before these quasi-improvisations were recombined into the work’s filigree matrix during final co-production with members of ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. 

Initially conceived as a live project and performed at festivals including Norberg, Atonal, Rewire and FAQ between 2016-2017, the final 33 minute recording thrillingly sustains the duelling, visceral tension and unpredictability of their live shows in its brute scrapes across 17 variated sections. But, with the ability to unstitch/embroider sounds outside the strictures of real-time live performance, the resulting structure is confoundingly labyrinthine, assiduously swerving the prosaic and sentimental in pursuit of explorative, emotively in/human expressions of complexity and unpredictability in a manner that has always been key to the ideals of experimental music.

In effect, the pair speak as one through an electro acoustic prism in a symbiotic, syncretic process of transformation. Railton is here the catalyst for some of Zinovieff’s definitive work in a career spanning 60 years. Her performances provide a radical variable - a sort of spirit in the machine - which is diffused, inverted and scattered by Zinovieff using various software applications, so that Railton plays around herself like a fractal mise-en-abyme, cutting her warped image to ribbons in a double refraction of the “real”, the instrumental, and its virtual allegory. In this (un)common, metaphoric language and poly-temporal syntax, they incisively speak to ideas of an uncanny valley of perception between the haptic and the intangible, conducting an absorbing dialogue that transcends and bends the story of avant-garde and electronic music in beguiling, free fashion.

The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by Johannes Schnatmann & Bill Kouligas.

RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer

Peter Zinovieff & Lucy Railton - RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer (PAN 90)

Too old as a woman, too young to be a composer. Monika Sokaitė (b. 1990) started her path in music as a violin player in Stasys Šimkus conservatoire. From 2006 she continued her studies in Vilnius Juozas Tallat-Kelpša conservatoire, where she graduated the disciplines of music theory and critics and composition with Prof. Teisutis Makačinas. Later Monika continued her studies as a composer at Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre with Prof. Dr. Ričardas Kabelis and Prof. Vaclovas Augustinas.
Her compositions are performed at numerous contemporary music festivals and concerts. She has got a 3rd prize in competitions for young composers in Vilnius 2010, 2nd prize in international competition MUSICA SACRA NOVA 2015 (Cologne, Germany) for the composition „LACRIMOSA“, 2nd prize in international competition SOFIA 2015 (Sofia, Bulgaria) for the composition for an orchestra and baritone solo „KARINA“, and the 1st prize in international competition “VOX JUVENTUTIS 2016” for the composition “DIVINA COMMEDIA. PARADISO. CANTO XXXIII”. In 2016 she was awarded diploma of aknowledgment by the President of the Republic of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė.

Label based in Berlin, est. 2008. http://www.p-a-n.org