Having debuted a handful of new songs at an intimate church show in London last week, Beth Orton is starting a new musical chapter with today's release of eight-and-a-half-minute epic "The Ground Above", her first new music since 2022's Weather Alive. The self-produced new track features two of the Weather Alive crew – Shahzad Ismaily on bass, Sam Beste on piano – plus Christos Stylianides on trumpet, Grey McMurray on electric guitar, and Dave Okumu on "backwards" electric guitar.

Watch the visualiser directed by Imogen Knight and Joseph Lynn below:

Commenting very briefly on "The Ground Above" in a press release, Orton says "We are all vulnerable beings living out invincible lives."

Going into more depth on Instagram, she adds:

"Linear time has no place in music. I find myself trying to iron out my brain like a map, to show what started where, I could spend forever writing notes in the margins, notes to self, finding archaeological artifacts, layers of soil and magic, the strata of love, sorrow and joy in relation to time, all that goes into the architecture of any particular song. 

What has kept me alive is a feral invincibility, barrelling through life, propelled magnetically as in a flying dream that won’t allow for time to get hold of my ankles and catch up with me. Grief had me say yes to life, to embrace and taste and devour. I know life to be as pointless and as meaningful as I can make it. I wanted to write some of this into a dream, a confluence of meaning and feeling. 

The Ground Above."