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Achy breaky beats >> Britfolk shacks up with trip hop in Beth Orton's Trailer Park by CHRIS YURKIW
Take square dance and Hi-NRG, for cheesy example. It's actually been done, you might remember a goofy novelty out of Scandinavia a few years ago called "Cotton Eyed Joe" (especially if you frequent NHL arenas). This kind of incongruous fusion of "authentic" and "artificial" music has been done before by, er, pioneers--whether for commercial or artistic reasons. But Beth Orton's hybrid is less sensational and more of the day, if in the same mold. The Chemical Brothers' chanteuse of choice (hers is the voice on "Alive: Alone" from Exit Planet Dust and "Where Do I Begin" from Dig Your Own Hole), Orton freely mixes acoustic folk music with loose break beats and synth washes on her new album Trailer Park (Heavenly/Dedicated). But the strange thing is that she came out of neither the folk nor club circuit prior to stumbling into music in 1993. Orton was an actress doing "fringy" theatre in London, performing in a play "about communism--no wait, capitalism!" she says, when audience member/producer William Orbit took notice of her, or rather, her voice. He convinced her to pop into his studio to do some spoken-word work for a track he was working on, then asked her to sing, then told her he wanted to do a record with her. Orton recorded a cover of Britfolk hero John Martyn's "Don't Wanna Know About Evil" under the name Spill, sang with the acoustic trip hop outfit Red Snapper on their first two singles, and even recorded a debut album with Orbit that came out in Japan, but which probably won't ever see wider release since Orton now disavows it. She claims it sounded dated right when it came out (1993); others say that it presaged trip hop, but the point is that Orton learned the studio, the acoustic guitar and songwriting all at the same time. Does she feel like a folkie? "I don't know," she says. "I know that I had to be boxed and shelved, which is fair enough--I can understand that. But I do pay homage to folk music, I use a really traditional style but done for today. So yeah, I guess I'm folk." One final incongruity is the title Trailer Park, a decidedly American phrase slapped on a document of most British music, whether you're talking about the acoustic or electronic side. And this from a Brit who didn't even know about the subculture of trailer trash before landing in North America for the first time earlier this year? "I liked the idea from the film Short Cuts," says Orton, "and for me, 'trailer park' just conjures up a lot of images and emotions. People in England said to me, 'Oh, you can't call the album Trailer Park!' But I wasn't going to call it Caravan Site, do you know what I mean?" At Club Soda this Monday, Nov. 3. 8:30pm, $8.50 + taxes & service
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At the current boiling point of the post-modern melting pot, no one should be surprised by any two kinds of apparently disparate music being melded. And especially not stuff fused from both sides of the rock/folk/blues vs. pop/dance/electronic fence, given the current electronica evolution.