Beth Orton

Elizabeth Caroline Orton (born 14 December 1970) is an English musician. Known for her "folktronica" sound, which mixes elements of folk and electronica, she was initially recognised for her collaborations with William Orbit, Andrew Weatherall, Red Snapper and the Chemical Brothers in the mid-1990s. Her UK/US first solo album, Trailer Park, received much critical acclaim in 1996. Orton developed a devoted audience with the release of the BRIT Award-winning album Central Reservation (1999) and the 2002 UK top 10 album, Daybreaker. Her 2006 album, Comfort of Strangers, was followed by a break during which Orton gave birth to her daughter and collaborated with the British guitarist Bert Jansch. Orton returned with Sugaring Season in 2012, which moved towards a purer acoustic sound, followed by a return to electronic music with Kidsticks, released in 2016.

Orton's music has been featured in the movies How to Deal and Vanilla Sky, and also in the TV series Felicity, Charmed, Dawson's Creek, Roswell, Grey's Anatomy and Manifest, providing her with exposure to a more mainstream American audience.

Early life and career

Orton was born in Dereham, Norfolk, but moved to Dalston, East London, at age fourteen. Her father, a public relations consultant and journalist, left her mother when Orton was eleven, and she lived with her mother, a journalist and political activist, and her two brothers, her father dying shortly afterwards. Orton studied A-levels at City College Norwich. Her mother died from cancer in 1989, when Orton was aged 19, which led to her travelling to Thailand for a short period, living with Buddhist nuns. On returning to London, Orton worked at jobs such as a waitress at Pizza Hut, and she even briefly owned her own catering company. Orton was an actress before becoming a musician, initially enrolling at the Anna Scher Theatre School. She toured in an experimental stage adaptation of Une Saison en Enfer with a theatre company touring throughout the UK, Russia and Ukraine, playing Arthur Rimbaud's lover.

While pursuing her musical interests in the underground London scene, she linked up with up-and-coming producers William Orbit and The Chemical Brothers who she performed with at live shows as well as joining them in the studio. She partnered with Andrew Weatherall to produce her first major solo album, the Brit Award-nominated Trailer Park.

Musical career

SuperPinkyMandy

Orton began working with William Orbit on an LP together as Spill, entitled Burn Blind. "Don't Wanna Know 'Bout Evil" was the first track on the album that ended up being released in just Orton's name. Superpinkymandy was named after a rag doll which she bought at a jumble sale at the age of six. This rare album was released only in Japan, in extremely limited numbers (popularly quoted as between 1,000 and 5,000 copies). The sound is very much Orbit's, but all of the songs (except "Don't Wanna Know 'Bout Evil" written by John Martyn) were co-written by Orton and Orbit, and some tracks were later recycled, in very different versions. "She Cries Your Name" later appeared on Trailer Park. "Yesterday's Gone" became "Montok Point" on the fourth Strange Cargo release, Hinterland (1995). Hinterland had Orton's vocals on several tracks, and also included an alternative version of "She Cries Your Name".

Early collaborations

Orton provided a one-word vocal to the first Red Snapper EP in 1994 ("Snapper"), then co-wrote and sang on "In Deep" on The Swank EP (also 1994). Ali Friend from Red Snapper later joined Orton's band.

It was roughly at this time that she met Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers and began the first in a series of collaborations, providing vocals for the track "Alive Alone" on Exit Planet Dust (1995). She would later provide vocals for the tracks "Where Do I Begin" on Dig Your Own Hole (1997) and "The State We're In" on Come with Us (2002). In 2018 she and The Chemical Brothers released a long-lost cover of Tim Buckley's "I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain", a collaborative effort dating back from the late '90s, when the three were sharing space in London’s Orinoco studios. According to Mixmag "Orton said she rediscovered the tune after it fell out of an unread copy of War and Peace."