Beth Orton

Elizabeth Caroline Orton, commonly known as Beth Orton, is a BRIT Award–winning English singer-songwriter. Known for her “folktronica” sound, which mixes elements of folk and electronica, she was initially recognised for her collaborations with William Orbit and the Chemical Brothers in the mid 1990s — but these were not Orton’s first recordings. She released a solo album, Superpinkymandy, in 1993. Her second solo album, Trailer Park, garnered much critical acclaim in 1996. With the release of the albums Central Reservation (1999) and the 2002 UK top 10 album Daybreaker, Beth developed a devoted fan base. On her 2006 release, Comfort Of Strangers, she moved towards a more folk based sound and away from the electronic sound of past albums. All of her recent releases are “carbon neutral”, whereby a tree is planted in a poor area of Mexico for every certain amount of units produced, to offset the emissions generated when pressing the CDs and other marketing paraphernalia. Orton has left her longtime record label and will begin work on a follow up album to Comfort Of Strangers which will be released sometime in 2011 on anti-. Some new material has been written and performed already.

SUPPORTING BETH… SAM AMIDON (US)

Sam Amidon was born and raised in Brattleboro, Vermont by folk musicians Peter and Mary Alice Amidon. He has released three albums of radically re-worked folksongs: “But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted,” recorded at his then-home of Harlem in 2006 with Thomas Bartlett; followed by “All Is Well” in 2008 and “I See The Sign” in 2010, both recorded in iceland with producer Valgeir Sigurðsson along with contributions from Nico Muhly and other Bedroom Community compatriots.

Sam’s folksong albums have received wide acclaim and have pulled many a soul back from the brink… his itinerant wanderings have taken him to far-off lands… and his solo performances have taken on a life and tenor of their own. Sam’s drawn comics and enigmatic home-made videos, the “self-inflicted field recordings” resulting from these internal and external journeys, have resulted in exhibitions at the Tony Shafrazi and Audio Visual Arts galleries in New York City, and the Gallery Kuhturm in Leipzig. His audio-visual show/comics lecture “Home Alone Inside My Head” was premiered at NYC’s The Kitchen in November 2010.