Forty Five Minutes Of Beyond The Beta Band

I saw the reformed Beta Band at the Apollo last night- review to follow in a day or two. I posted a Beta Band Sunday mix back in March when the re- union was announced and the tickets went up for sale and I've previously posted a Steve Mason solo mix too. To complete a Beta Band hat-trick of Sunday mixes today's mix is an after The Beta Band mix, forty five minutes of songs from after they split, with Steve mason well represented in various guises and also The Aliens, the band Robin Jones and John MacLean formed after the four Betas called it a day in 2004. 

The Beat Band split up in 2004 and embarked on a farewell tour. Between forming in 1996 and splitting in 2004 they had followed their artistic and cultural noses, making music that spanned the groundbreaking Three EPS and then three further albums that all suffered a little in comparison to the initial trio of EPs. 

In 2004 they owed their record label Parlophone £1.2 million. There was enough money in the bank to pay each member a month's wages (£1000 each). On top of this there was a £120, 000 debt to the taxman, to be split four ways. Parlophone wrote the debt off (EMI signed Robbie Williams the same month for £80 million so money wasn't in short supply at major record companies in the early 00s). The Beta Band spent the money on art- records and recording, videos and films, gigs and touring. In an interview in March Steve Mason said 'We never wanted to be rock stars or make lots of money. Our ambitions were solely artistic and we pushed ourselves to the last minute. Then we split up. But how many bands can say the spent £1./2 million on art?'

Steve Mason went solo under a variety of names- first as King Biscuit Time, then as Black Affair and Good Face and has made five albums under his own name. The Aliens have blazed their own trail, in the 00s and the late 2010s with three albums and EPs and singles. Gordon Anderson records as Lone Pigeon. Between them they've made over a dozen albums since splitting The Beta Band, all of them filled with the same pioneering, willful and artistic spirit that was the core of their starting point in 1996- folk, psychedelia, electronics, samples and found sounds, weird pop, electro, post- rock... few stones left unturned. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Beyond The Beta Band

• King Biscuit Time: I Walk The Earth
• The Aliens: Sunlamp Show
• Alien Stadium: The Visitations
• Steve Mason: America Is Your Boyfriend (Tim Goldsworthy Remix)
• Black Affair: Tak! Attack!
• Emiliana Torrini and Steve Mason: I Go Out
• Steve Mason: Boys Outside (Andrew Weatherall Dub 2)
• The Aliens: Bobby's Song

King Biscuit Time was a Steve Mason solo project from before The Beta Band split, so the appearance of I walk The Earth here is a bit of a bending of the rules but whatever. It's got all the familiar Mason sounds and styles- acoustic guitars, hip hop drums and his melancholic and doleful vocals. 

Gordon Lone Pigeon joined his former Beta Bandmates Robin and John in The Aliens after The Beta Band split. The Aliens released Astronomy For Dogs in 2007 and then Luna a year later. Sunlamp Show is from the latter, a song that sounds like The Beach Boys after a week in a cottage in the Scottish highlands on happy drugs. Madcap psychedelia. The ten minute Bobby's Song closes this mix but opened Luna, an epic Lone Pigeon song. Robot Man from Astronomy For Dogs sat on this mix for a while but I took it out. Not sure why. 

Alien Stadium was Steve Mason and the late Martin Duffy, Primal Scream's keyboard wizard with Brendan Lynch on drum programming. They released Livin' In Elizabethan Times in 2017, widescreen and symphonic sci fi inspired songs about aliens destroying the planet. One of those EPs that makes you wish they'd done more. 

Black Affair was a Mason solo project, 80s electro from 2008, three singles and an album Pleasure Pressure Point. 

Tim Goldsworthy's remix of Steve Mason's America Is Your Boyfriend was a song on a four track EP called Coup D'Etat, three new songs and the remix and originally from 2019's About The Light. Tim Goldsworthy was in UNCLE with James Lavelle and then LCD Soundsystem (before a big fall out with James Murphy. He also produced David Holmes' Let's Get Killed.

I Go Out was a one off collaboration between Steve and Emiliana Torrini along with Toy, produced by Dan Carey and released on 7" single on Carey's Speedy Wunderground label in 2013. Six minutes of driving krauty joy, recorded and mixed in a day.

Boys Outside was a Mason solo album ,a soft and acoustic, folk-ish songs that came from a period of serious poor mental health. Andrew Weatherall did two remixes, a pair of dubs that still sound like some of his best remix work. There was talk of an album with Andrew producing or a remixing the entire Boys Outside album but it never happened more's the pity. there were some Dennis Bovell dub remixes too but I couldn't find them. Funny how digital files just vanish sometimes. 

All Comes Down To This

A Certain Ratio released a new song last week, a two and a half minute burst of energy called All Comes Down To This. An album of the same name follows in April. On All Comes Down To This ACR recorded as the core trip of Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Don Johnson and hooked up with Dan Carey as producer, a person with a reputation for stripping away and honing in.

By reducing themselves to the trio that first came together in Manchester in 1979 they have distilled their sound down to its core, the rubber basslines and drums leading the way, funk and post- punk rhythms reworked and reimagined for 2024. Martin's guitar slides around, all chords and FX pedals. Synths and electronics burst in in the middle with Jez's voice very much at the centre of things. The band say that the album is in part as response to the madness of the world in recent years- this first song from it sounds like that, an urgent and necessary song from a group who keep on finding new ways to express themselves. 

Sexwitch

Sometimes, something really good happens when you least expect it. The new Natasha Khan project pricked my ears up when I first read about it a few weeks back, then Drew recommended it and Walter posted it recently too. The first time I listened to it on a stream it blew me away. Sexwitch are Natasha Khan, Dan Carey and some of Toy. The band name alone gives you an idea of what you're going to get. Over six songs the album unfolds with some dark and thundering grooves, bass and drums well to the fore, jagged shards of guitar and Natasha's vocals, chanting and controlled but also letting go with shrieks and screams. 'I addicted him, he addicted me' she intones, which captures the feel as well as anything. Four of the songs are Middle Eastern or North African in origin, the lyrics translated into English, and these are the ones that really move, that make this record connect, where the thumping, voodoo magic happens. A sexy, psychedelic stew.