Beth Orton brings beauty to middle-age, Jake Blount is a revelation – the week’s best albums

• The chill-out rooms of rave culture would have felt empty without Beth Orton, who has been an intriguing flavour in British music since the early 1990s. Her distinctive, fragile voice provided lyrical motifs (sometimes spoken, sometimes half-sung) on tracks by ambient techno pioneer William Orbit, big beat powerhouse The Chemical Brothers and acid jazz trio Red Snapper.