Her new album may have been recorded in Los Angeles, but as she returns for a live appearance in Norwich this weekend, singer Beth Orton reveals why she still yearns for Norfolk.

Eastern Daily Press: Beth Orton performing at Latitude 2013. Photo: Nick ButcherBeth Orton performing at Latitude 2013. Photo: Nick Butcher (Image: ©Archant 2013)

Beth Orton's dreamy, evocative voice has the power to take listeners to a thousand different places – from desolation and wistful melancholy to soaring joy, fun and playfulness.

Matched with her poetic song-writing, which is rich in raw emotion and stark honesty, it is little wonder that since breaking on to the music scene in the 1990s, the Norfolk-born singer continues to win such acclaim.

This weekend, she returns to Norwich as part of a major tour following the recent release of her new album Kidsticks.

It is a big departure from her work of recent years. Instead of that distinct acoustic, folk-inspired sound, Kidsticks is a bold record, full of swooping electronic loops and melodies.

When musicians talk about getting back to their roots, it's usually an excuse to pull out a battered old acoustic to create some bare bones music. In Beth's case, going back to her roots meant something very different.

Having relocated to California a couple of years ago, Beth began experimenting with a series of electronic loops; a record inspired both by the wide-open nature of Los Angeles and the spirit of Beth's earliest recordings, electronic work with producers like William Orbit, Andrew Weatherall and Kieran Hebden as well as groove-based music with Red Snapper.

Co-produced by Beth and Andrew Hung from F**k Buttons, this is the first record she has written on synthesizers instead of acoustic guitar. It was recorded with various musician friends of Beth's in California, including George Lewis Jr. from Twin Shadow on electric guitars, Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor on backing vocals and bass guitar and Dustin O'Halloran from A Winged Victory for the Sullen who provided piano and string arrangements.

It almost brings her full circle to when she started out working with the likes of the Chemical Brothers and William Orbit, and coincides with the 20th anniversary of the release of Trailer Park, which launched her career.

'When I started out I didn't really think about the future, I completely fell into it. I wrote little poems, and did theatre classes, but then it turned out that I could sing and I seem to be fairly good at it, even if I do say so myself,' she chuckles.

'I was very lucky though to find out that I had this ability and it makes me wonder how many of us live and die not knowing what we are actually capable of?

'When Central Reservation came out, I was launched into the public eye. I did become pretty famous, I won a Brit. But of course it increased the pressure,' she says.

Her yearning to experiment more, coupled with becoming a mum, saw her make an effort to escape that pressure.

'Curiosity took over, I suddenly felt like I wanted to learn more about music, to see what I was capable of. I feel I have spent the past 10 years relearning my craft. Mind you, now I feel I have thrown it up in the air again with this record and I think that really shows playing it live.'

She wrote a lot of Kidsticks while living in California, which is reflected in its sound. Does her location influence what she writes?

'No, I think often it is the other way round, where I make music depends on how I am feeling,' she says.

'California was amazing and obviously you have sunshine all the time, but I missed the seasons - my daughter missed the rain - and I also found myself really missing the Norfolk skyline. When I am in Norfolk, I feel like I am living in a live painting.'

It was to Norfolk where she returned for her last album, 2012's Sugaring Season, having previously been unsure she would ever make a record again.

That album began in a 'cow barn' at the end of a dirt lane in Norfolk in the summer of 2007. Orton, having split from her label and raising her then infant daughter on her own, packed up her life in London and moved back to where she was from.

'I was on my own, challenged like I had never been, with few resources,' she explains.

So she did what she knew best: she played. 'It was a long summer, and I set up a little studio in the back garden and just got deeper into what I was making. Singing in different voices, messing around with my guitar,' says Beth. While pregnant, Orton had begun taking weekly guitar lessons from her friend and collaborator, folk legend Bert Jansch, who before his death in 2011 introduced her to the alternate guitar tunings which were a minor revelation for the singer.

She recalls it as a pivotal time. Nevertheless she was inspired by the natural world around her, her new family and what she had picked up in her weekly visits to Jansch.

However where Sugaring Season had an autumnal feel that was unashamedly mature yet impressively free, showcasing Orton's guitar skills and swooning vocals, its follow-up Kidsticks repositions Beth's unmistakable voice inside 10 playful and kinetic songs.

A resolutely focused album, it represents a rare chance to hear an established artist get plugged in and completely rework the songwriting process with wide-eyed, open-minded glee. Where its predecessor had in its roots in her quietly woodshedding in Norfolk, this album started with 10 days of Beth and co-producer Andrew Hung making loops in a garage in LA.

Over the next 18 months, Beth built the tracks up from basic four-bar loops into beautiful multi-layered electronic songs augmented by live musicians, in her first official foray into production.

Beth was born near Dereham and grew up in and around Norwich. Her parents separated and her father died when she was just 11, her mother eight years later. It was her mum's involvement with Norwich Arts Centre which fired her interest in music.

'It was just part of our life,' she says. 'Music was like politics at that time and they were both very interconnected. It was like that in our house. Who did you support, whose side were you on? It was an incredibly exciting time.

'Growing up in Norwich for me was fantastic and there was a huge amount of music. I was so privileged to see a lot of brilliant, wild and entertaining artists. There was something different on every night. I had big brothers as well, so I was surrounded by their friends and all those influences. I still come back a lot now to visit friends.'

Are her two children as exposed to the joys of music as she was as a child?

'My husband is a musician as well so they are privy to that world, but I mean we are not sitting round a campfire every night with our guitars out, we haven't got time for that,' she laughs.

'That said, my daughter does have brilliant taste in music, she has been listening to Blondie this morning. She's pretty hip now I come to think about it.'

• Beth Orton plays the Waterfront, King Street, Norwich, on September 24 at6.30pm, Tickets cost £19.50, and are available from the Box Office on 01603 508050, or online at www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk