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> AUGUST 02 NEWS

CD1 - HVN125CDS
1. Anywhere (Album Version)
2. Beautiful World
3. Anywhere (Two Lone Swordsmen Remix - radio edit)
4. Anywhere (video)

CD2 - HVN125CD
1. Anywhere (Two Lone Swordsmen Remix)
2. Anywhere (Adrian Sherwood's Off Me Rocker Mix)
3. Anywhere (Album Version)

DVD - HVN125DVD
1. Anywhere (Two Lone Swordsmen Remix) - video
2. Anywhere (Album Version) - Audio
3. Concrete Sky (Live Acoustic Version) - Audio

As far as I know, there are 3 versions of Anywhere remixes that are not available commercially. They are:

1. Two Lone Swordsmen Instrumental
2. Adrian Sherwood Off Me Head Cut Mix
3. Photek Remix

These remixes can be found on the UK 5-trk promo acetate of Anywhere.

Beth Orton will wrapped up her acoustic set gigs for November with a KCRW show - A Sounds Eclectic Evening on November 23. The show will feature other artists like Norah Jones, Zero 7, Aimee Mann, Theivery Corporation, DJ Shadow and Kinky. This show is only available exclusively for KCRW members.

Ticket info:
Ticket Levels
Platinum level ticket ($250)
- Premiere Seating + Backstage Party on The Patio + After-Party
Gold level ticket ($125)
- Premiere Seating + After-Party
Silver level ticket ($75)
- Preferred Seating
Reserved Seating ($50, $30)

KCRW members will have the unique opportunity to purchase tickets before they go on sale to the general public. KCRW's members-only presale begins Monday, September 30 at 11 am. Members-only presale ends on Thursday, October 10.

For more info, please visit the show main page.

Fine Line Music Cafe
Minneapolis, MN
Saturday, November 16, 2002 9:00PM
$20.50 - $35.00
Charge by Phone: 651/989-5151
Seating Chart

Ticket Sale Date(s):
Internet Presale Begins: Thu Sep 26, 10:00AM
Internet Presale Ends: Fri Sep 27, 10:00PM
Internet Public Sale: Sat Sep 28, 10:00AM

Ticket on sale now at Ticketmaster:

Variety Playhouse
Atlanta, GA
Sunday, November 10, 2002 8:00PM
$17.50 - $20.00
Charge by Phone: 404-249-6400
Seating Chart is not available

Ticket Sale Date(s):
Internet Presale Begins: Wed Sep 25, 10:00AM
Internet Presale Ends: Fri Sep 27, 10:00AM
Internet Public Sale: Fri Sep 27, 10:00AM

Please visit ticketmaster to make your purchase.

>>> READ THE INTERVIEW 

Just posted on the forum, Werker, reveal 10 new dates for North America and it seems that these dates are all acoustic sets with Ted Barnes and Ali Friend only. Originally there was a date on the Nov 14 at Indianapolis -- Birdys but the promotors has made a mistake and the show is NOT going to happen. Please check the tour page for more updates.

Nov 10 Atlanta, GA -- Variety Playhouse
Nov 12 Philadelphia, PA -- Electric Factory
Nov 13 Pittsburgh, PA -- Rosebud Cafe
Nov 15 Columbia, MO -- Blue Note
Nov 16 Minneapolis, MN -- Fine Line
Nov 17 Madison, WI -- Barrymore Theatre
Nov 19 Vancouver, BC -- Commodore
Nov 20 Seattle, WA -- Moore Theatre
Nov 21 Portland, OR -- Roseland Theatre
Nov 23 Los Angeles, CA -- KCRW Radio Show

The item can be purchased from eil.com for UKP10.00. I do not make any proceeds from this. I am just listing this as a reference for interested collectors.

Thanks to James, we now can enjoyed the article on Beth Orton in last week Sunday Times Culture Magazine! Jeremy's Somebody's Pages was also mentioned as a link at the end of the article!

September 15, 2002: Postcards from the edge

Her music is still driven by her demons, but Beth Orton is in her prime and even learning to relax, says Dan Cairns

Many people have grappled with the problem of how best to describe Beth Orton and the music she has been making since the release of her 1996 debut, Trailer Park. “Comedown queen” found favour for a while, in that it captured the club culture and dance grooves that gave added edge to her modern, urban folk songs. Orton herself once offered the slightly tortuous “psychedelic folk-soul”. But few have cut to the chase quite so unhesitatingly (and economically) as the tabloid writer who reviewed her new album, Daybreaker, in just one line, thus: “More of the same from the funky folky filly.”
“Oh, God, that’s f***ing brilliant, abso-LUTE-ly,” the 31-year-old gurgles in the strange, phonetically all-over-the-place accent that her Norfolk childhood and an adolescence spent in east London have combined to give her. Sheltering her 6ft frame inside a sheepskin coat any 1970s football manager would be proud to hang in their hall, Orton looks today as if she’s occupying what might be called her middle ground — the calm, quiet space she has fought to stake a permanent claim to after years of extremes. Extreme highs and lows. Acclaim, paralysing self-doubt. Illness, restored health. Bereavement, new beginnings. And what has so beguiled fans of her work in the past six years has been the fact that Orton has, as they see it, poured all of these experiences into her songs; that it is the misfortune of poor, complicated, bedevilled Beth to play out these acts of slump and recovery on record and in public. So much so that listening to her albums seems, at times, like voyeurism. Only it’s not quite as simple as that, she says.

“The songs can’t just be autobiography,” the singer insists, “because otherwise it is like a continual picking at the scab. I find it hard to analyse it. I’m scared that I’ll pull it to pieces and lose the beauty of it. But I don’t think it’s as clear as: ‘Oh, I will write about this and therefore I’ll release my demons and they’ll no longer exist.’”

What fascinates many people — and, it must be said, riles others — is that Orton came to her career both late and sideways on. And entirely by accident. The act of asking a then unknown record producer for a light at a party set in motion a sequence of events that could be described as either serendipity or just too damn lucky by half, depending on which way you choose to look at it. But when, in the early 1990s, Orton borrowed William Orbit’s lighter and he said he liked the sound of her voice — her speaking voice, mind you — both were taking the first steps on a path that has since led to Mercury nominations, Brit awards, gold discs, musical friends in high places, producing records for Madonna and, in Orton’s case, hearing Trailer Park described as “one of my favourite records of the past 10 years” by none other than Bruce Springsteen.

Years before this, up near the north Norfolk coast — when she suffered, aged eight, the divorce of her parents, and, three years afterwards, the death of her father; when she was bunking off school and drinking Pernod and black till she could forget herself — Orton was anything but lucky. The final straw came when she was caught shoplifting (the strangely resonant mix of a pork pie and a marshmallow) at 14. Her mother decided to up sticks to Hackney, where Orton attended classes at the Anna Scher drama school. And then, five years later, within only a week of a Christmas Eve diagnosis, her mother died of breast cancer, her daughter at her side.

“I had a wild time,” Orton now recalls, more in regret than fond remembrance. “I was a little alcoholic when I was 12. People used to say: ‘Your poor little organs, you’re soaking them in alcohol and they haven’t even grown yet.’”

But Orton was also singing, albeit always with the Hoover turned on to accompany her. “I sang all the time, I’d dance around with the obligatory hairbrush. And there were a lot of people around shouting: ‘Shut the f*** up.’” (Swearing, for Orton, isn’t so much occasional risqué stress-reducer as richly relished scatter-gun ornamentation.) “And now I’ve created that again,” she laughs. “A therapist would have a field day. I still need my Hoover, which is my producers standing behind me going ‘Bur-bur-bur’. And then I need loads of people going: ‘You’re crap, who d’you think you are anyway?’ That’s what it’s like growing up with two older brothers. It’s just that now it’s global.”

The voice that she used to try to muffle with the vacuum cleaner is one of the most distinctive currently to be heard in music. As with Orton’s songs, there is the danger of reading into its conflicting tones and poignant cadences several case histories’ worth of tragedy and redemption. But it’s an extraordinary instrument nonetheless, capable of both ethereal, Joni Mitchell-like soars and swoops, and sudden wracked croaks that contain echoes of the ciggy-sucking, post-heroin Marianne Faithfull.

“I have a voice you either love or f***ing hate,” Orton says. “What’s his name, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant — which one’s the singer? Jimmy Page?” That’ll be Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, then. “He came up on Later With Jools Holland and went: ‘Lot of people didn’t like my voice, either. Lot of people said I couldn’t sing.’ Which was kind of nice. But kind of horrible.”

And it was the voice, rather than her songs, that got Orton started. With Orbit (briefly her boyfriend) on a short-lived project called Spill; fronting the London band Red Snapper; and singing Alive:Alone, the final track on the Chemical Brothers’ 1995 debut, Exit Planet Dust. All these collaborations have continued to bear fruit. Orbit has produced Daybreaker’s elegiac closing song, Thinking About Tomorrow. Red Snapper’s Ali Friend now plays bass in her touring band. And Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, on whose albums Orton has regularly appeared, repaid the favour by turning Daybreaker’s title track into edgy, noirish electronica.

Yet, despite the fact that these people started hanging out with each other when they were either complete unknowns or first setting foot in the foothills of fame, some critics persist in labelling Orton as merely a mediocre talent with a knack for making the right friends. And if you wanted to look at her career that way, well, you wouldn’t have to look far for ammo: the roll call of musicians she has worked with also includes Beck, Johnny Marr, Emmylou Harris, Ryan Adams and Everything But the Girl’s Ben Watt.

“I get patronised so much,” Orton protests. “If I’ve ever taken anything on from the dance world, it’s that it’s about collaborating, pulling people in, different singers, different mixers. And isn’t that the same as what Primal Scream do, or Death in Vegas, or William Orbit? These are all the people that I started making music around, and was inspired by. Well, they’re not accused of that. Is it because I’m female?” And the answer, almost certainly, is yes. There is something about Orton’s mix of shy and pugnacious that gets up a lot of people’s noses, particularly men. Suspicious that the shyness is being used against them as a decoy, they become positively alarmed when the pugnaciousness manifests itself. That Beth Orton, they imply, doesn’t she realise that female singer-songwriters are supposed to sit hunched over their acoustic guitars, flicking back their long, blonde hair and cooing softly about love and baking?

Would that be the same Beth Orton who, partly because she suffers from the agonising, incurable stomach ailment Crohn’s disease, was hospitalised after recording both Trailer Park and 1999’s Central Reservation? Who spared us (and herself) nothing when, on those two albums, she struggled with her mother’s death? Whose crack band is still the same as the one she played with on her debut, and with whom she embarks on a British tour next month? Earlier this year, as if anticipating a renewed surge of flak, Orton made a pact with herself that humble wasn’t good enough any more; it was confidence from now on. So, I say, you’re no longer prepared to be humble. Her voice rises. “I have got confidence, f***, yeah. Why shouldn’t I?” Why indeed?

More than respectably, Daybreaker went in at No 10 in the British chart, and entered the much tougher American one at No 40. Orton’s recent US tour was a sell-out, a feat likely to be matched by the British leg. And her album, while it lacks songs so sodden with grief that you feel you should wring them out, confirms what fans have been saying for years: Orton is, quite simply, one of the finest and most intriguing singer-songwriters at work today. More of the same from the funky folky filly? Yes, please.

http://www.beth-orton.co.uk
Lovingly maintained site

A 3rd date for London's Shepherds Bush Empire has just been announced on the Heavenly Recordings website. Fixed on 25th October, the gig will have Ed Harcourt supporting Beth and tickets costing UKP17.50.

2 new American dates has been announced in November. The 14th Nov one is already on sale while the 16th Nov date will only be on sale on 28th Sept at 10am.

Thu, 11/14/02 8:30 pm
Birdys
Indianapolis, IN
Tickets on sale now

Sat, 11/16/02 9:00 pm
Fine Line Music Cafe
Minneapolis, MN
on sale 09/28/2002 10:00 am

Anywhere CD1: UKP2.95
Anywhere CD2: UKP2.95
Anywhere DVD: UKP3.95

Opal Music can be found at http://www.opalmusic.com
Please also see my special page on Anywhere for updates.

HARP BACK ISSUES
PO BOX 5780
TAKOMA PARK
MD 20913
USA

Harp Magazine can also be viewed online at http://www.harpmagazine.com

Galaxy of Emptiness
Paris Train
Daybreaker
ted's Waltz
Mount Washington
Someone's Daughter
Carmella
Sweetest Decline
God Song
Thinking about Tomorrow
Anywhere
Stolen Car
Central Reservation

encore 1:
This one's gonna bruise
Concrete sky
Pass in time
She cries your name

encore 2:
best bit

It was a fabulous show and as usual Beth told us a joke:
Man walks into a psychiatrists office wearing only cling wrap underwear. Dr says I can clearly see your nuts.

Thanks to laurab for telling me that coz I lost my feed when she told the joke. ;(

Beth Orton will be playing at Paradiso, Amsterdam in Holland at 8:30pm (Amsterdam time).

mms://media.astralwerks.tv/astralwerks_tv/open/beth_orton/epk_hi.wmv

You will need Windows Media to view it. I'm sure RealPlayer will do nicely too.

01. CONCRETE SKY
02. ALI'S WALTZ
03. BOBBY GENTRY
04. CARMELLA (4 TET REMIX)

Aphex Twin "Drukqs"
The Avalanches "Since I Left You"
Bjork "Vespertine"
Cee-Lo "Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections"
DJ Shadow "The Private Press"
Doves "Last Broadcast"
The Flaming Lips "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots"
The Hives "Veni Vidi Vicious"
N*E*R*D "In Search Of…"
Zero 7 "Simple Things"

For more information, please see the Shortlist Prize official site. The winner will be announced on the 29th October 2002.

Jeremy Bromley of Somebody's Pages said that there could possibly be a US release for Concrete Sky EP after a word with Pru Harris (Rough Management). Nothing is comfirmed yet but it could be released on 14 October 2002. Check back here for updates. 

Track list:

1.Concrete sky
2.Beth discusses some of the possible meanings of "Concrete Sky" as well as working with Johnny Marr, Ryan Adams, and her own band.
3.Paris train
4.The musical and lyrical track of "Paris Train" is traced. Beth also addresses how listeners perceive her and the evolution of "Anywhere."
5.Anywhere
6.The collaborative nature of "Daybreaker" is considered again: the input of Beth's longtime producer Victor Van Vugt, the disc's mixers including Everything But the Girl's Ben Watt and the Chemical Brothers.
7.Daybreaker
8.Beth's reaction to the "dance-folk" tag given to her music is aired, also Beth discusses "Daybreaker" then a chat about just what is a "Daybreaker?" Then a discussion about the musical and personal growht of Ms. Orton and her spirituality leads to...
9.God song
10.Emmylou Harris and the necklace...William Orbit's early musical encouragement...and years later, Beth's 2000 Brit award
11.Thinking About Tomorrow

Bonus tracks:
12.Concrete sky (acoustic) - recorded live at WXRT Chicago 6/4/02
13.Thinking about tomorrow (acoustic) - recorded live at KCRW Santa Monica 5/28/02

To see an earlier news item about Anywhere (the next single), please click here.

New tour dates announced. Beth Orton will tour Europe mainly in September. The Sept 18 show is a double billed with Terry Callier.

EUROPE TOUR DATES
09-14-02: Italy: Binario Zero, Milan
09-15-02: Spain: Apolo, Barcelona
09-17-02: France: Cafe De La Danse, Paris
09-18-02: Belgium: Orangerie (hd w/Terry Callier)
09-19-02: Holland: Paradiso, Amsterdam
09-20-02: Germany: Kantine, Cologne
09-22-02: Sweden: The Cirkus, Stockholm
09-23-02: Norway: Rockefeller, Oslo
09-24-02: Sweden: Kulturbolaget, Malmo
09-25-02: Denmark: Pumpehuset, Copenhagen

Also a new date has been added in the UK:
10-30-02: Ireland, Belfast, Mandela Hall (hd)

Beth-lehem is looking for contributions to reviews and/or setlists for all Beth Orton gigs (past, present and future). So if you are catching or have caught any Beth Orton gigs, please write to me at webmaster@beth-lehem.com Any kind of contributions are most welcome. In the meantime, you can check out the Beth-lehem Tour Page.

More information about the movie can be found on http://www.bluecrush.com
If I am not wrong, the movie has just been release in the States a couple of weeks ago.

Opal Music ( http://www.opalmusic.com ) listed Anywhere as a single and a DVD release for Oct 21st 2002. The single is sold at UKP2.95 and the DVD is for UKP$3.95. 

But I'm not too surprise if the DVD becomes unavailable in the end. The last time round, Opal Music listed Concrete Sky with a DVD release but in the end, it was not available. Anyway, if you like (or to play safe), you can pre-order these items from them. Opal Music are rather reliable people.

Recap of Daybreaker previous positions: #8 - #20 - # -35 - #48 - #71

The camera follows Beth as she walks through a beautiful Oregon Giant Forest in the late afternoon. The light is natural, the camera work loose and organic, moving from close-ups to side shots keeping lights changing and feeling alive. As we walk through the forest, we came across the band memebers one at a time. They are walkung or sitting, being causal and themselves. The feeling is open without any hype, like the song. I want to include awkward moments, the not perfectly slick moments, to make it feel more authentic and personal. Towards, the end, the trees clear as Beth and her band arrive at the ocean. Now we can see the sky with the late afternoon sun. They take some cheap fireworks from the box - sparklers and roman candles - and set them off against the setting sun 

- Mike Mills

Taken from August issue of CMJ

MORNING STAR
Beth Orton doesn't go looking for songs, they just bowl her over like a sunrise. And her new Daybreaker should do as much to you
Scott Frampton

"Am I really that tall?"

Beth Orton unfolds her tangle of limbs and slides out from behind the cafe table to size herself up, curious. She's a few inches shy of six feet. Not that tall, it's agreed. She's also not morose, or a delicate flower. She's not a lot of things she's read about herself. Squinting in the sun of the first hot day of the year, it's like she's peering in a distant morrior, trying to see what everyone else is seeing.

Daybreaker (AstralWerks), her third record, has alot of what people love about Beth Orton. Her wounded bray nestles comfortably in electronic textures, a full band with strings or just acoustic guitars tumbling like rain; her gentle rasp holds soft notes like a lover's whisper. On songs like "Paris Train", words splash over the choruses as if she's trying to catch up to a part of her life that's getting away.

As much as the annual break in her voice imbuses her songs with heartbreak, that kind of desperation isn't a tenable persona, and gtetting caught up in the middle of how she sounds and waht she's trying to express leaves her flustered. "I don't know if I ever try to express anything, really." she says of her songwriting. "It just sort of comes, to be honest, I don't mean to be an ass, but it's true. I never go in with an intention, necessarily. The intention takes its own time.

I don;t know. It's really hard to describe," she continues. "I don't sit down and go, 'I want to write a song about this particular subject,' and yet at the same time, I sit down and write about a particular feeling, which isn't the same thing.

"I'll tell you a story about 'God Song', and how that came about. I was doing a Harry Smith project. You know Harry Smith? The folk anthology? [The seminal three volume The Anthology of American Folk Music]. They wanted me to do two songs, and I'd been busy, and the day before the gigs, the CD arrives, you know, the folk anthology, and the idea is there are particular songs they want me to song. So I tried to put the CD on, and for some reason my CD player decided to break that day. So all I had was the words, and the chords at the top of the page. I had never heard the song 'Frankie And Johnny' before. 'He's my man and he keeps doing me wrong', is the chorus. So I just had these words, and I just made up my own melody. And I sang it that night, and I was like, "Fuck I Love this,' and I was like, 'I'll just do a cover of it, 'And then I was like, 'Oh, fuck it!' And then I heard the original, and mine is nothing like the original. And I was like, 'What if I wrote my own words to the chorus?' So I started just messing around in my own time, not for anyone else, not for any reason, but for my own thing. And then I was just mor einterested in the idea of he's my man and I keep doing him wrong. And now, maybe this is my answer to that song, maybe this is me being Frankie. Maybe, maybe, I'm the modern-day Frankie and I'm just admitting that actually I'm doing him wrong, or maybe he is God, and maybe when you reflect on someone, you reflect on your relationship to God. And... I don't know... If you want to get really into it, there is a literal sense in what I'm saying, but what I'm saying is also really not literal. It's kind of a ... I don't know... I just really get into all that... For me, it's like this on top of this, that underneath.

She guestures, satcking her hands, and hoping to augment whatever intuitive sense she made with that last sentence, and draws a ling breath. Her eyes darting around the table, the patio, the idling linen truck a sidewalk away, and make contact. They really are that big. She was lost for a few minutes in that song, but now she's back.

"Do you know what I mean?"

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