Beth Orton - SuperPinkyMandy (1993)

Elizabeth Caroline Orton was born on 14 December 1970 in Dereham, Norfolk, but moved to Dalston, East London, at age fourteen. She studied A-levels at City College Norwich, and after the death of her mother when Orton was 19, she travelled to Thailand for a short period, living with Buddhist nuns. On returning to London, she worked at jobs such as a waitress at Pizza Hut, and she even briefly owned her own catering company. She was an actress before becoming a musician, initially enrolling at the Anna Scher Theatre School, and she toured in an experimental stage adaptation of 'Une Saison en Enfer' with a theatre company touring throughout the UK, Russia and Ukraine, playing Rimbaud's lover. In 1993 Orton began working with William Orbit on an LP together as Spill, entitled 'Burn Blind', but 'Don't Wanna Know 'bout Evil' was the first of their collaborations that ended up being released in just Orton's name. The album that it was taken from was called 'Superpinkymandy', after a rag doll which she bought at a jumble sale at the age of six, and it was only granted an extremely limited release in Japan, with reports of as few as 5,000 copies being pressed. The sound is very much Orbit's, but all of the songs, with the exception of John Martyn's 'Don't Wanna Know 'Bout Evil', were Orton/Orbit co-writes, with some tracks later being recycled in very different versions, such as 'She Cries Your Name' on 'Trailer Park', and 'Yesterday's Gone' becoming 'Montok Point' on 1995's 'Hinterland'. These days Orton largely passes over the release when interviewed, citing 1996's 'Trailer Park' as her first album, and while it has more of a dance influenced style than the folktronica of her subsequent albums, it's still a very enjoyable record in its own right, and I can't see why she hates it so much that she's tried to expunge it from her discography.  

Track listing

01 Don't Wanna Know 'bout Evil
02 Faith Will Carry
03 Yesterday's Gone
04 She Cries Your Name
05 When You Wake
06 Roll the Dice
07 City Blue
08 The Prisoner
09 Where Do You Go
10 Release Me