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. 

Saturday Live

Last month The Charlatans travelled across the USA with Ride playing a tour of double headers, each band taking it in turns to headline. While out there The Charlatans called in at KEXP, a radio station in Seattle and recorded a half hour live set. KEXP have a load of these up on the internet (Ride did one a few years ago in fact), a session which isn't quite a gig- there's no audience for starters- but which is filmed as the band play live. The sound is always good, the bands seem to enjoy it and the filming is revealing but unobtrusive. It's good to be able to see what the musicians are actually doing on each song. You get to marvel at Tim's jumper. 

The Charlatans play four songs at KEXP- the massive, crunching Chemical Brothers assisted 1997 single One To Another, the wheezy organ- led Weirdo and the subtle, funky ode to early 90s hedonism of Chewing Gum Weekend (both from 1992's Between 10th And 11th album, an album they played in full back in September at New Century Hall, a night which revealed the album to be a lost gem) and their 1990 breakthrough The Only One I Know. 

As a contrast, slipping back in time but still in front of TV cameras, here they are in 1996 playing at Channel 4's The White Room playing One To Another and Crashin' In in front of a youthful audience. The late and sadly missed Jon Brookes is on drums, kicking up a fearsome groove. Organ and keys are courtesy of Martin Duffy, standing in for the recently departed Rob Collins who died in a car crash that year. I think this clip was the first time Martin played with them outside a rehearsal room. A week later they played at Knebworth supporting Oasis. Duffy sadly died last year too. The Charlatans are a band who have known tragedy. The final minute of the clip has the band playing the end section of Crashin' In while Tim stands at the back of the stage, grinning at the sound his band are making. 

Fate's Faithful Punchline

A few weeks ago Nina Walsh rediscovered and shared a YouTube playlist made my Andrew Weatherall when he and Nina were doing Moine Dubh (the record label they formed to put out weird, off kilter folk music based in Crystal Palace). Nina said Andrew often forgot his usernames and passwords for YouTube and was constantly having to create new accounts- it's nice to know that's something that affects top DJs and producers as well as the rest of us. The playlist, Dubh Drops, is here and features an array of acts including Cheval Sombre, The Shadow Project, Hungry Ghosts, Amanda Palmer and Edward Ka- Spel, The Black Ryder, Dean Wareham, Rose City Band, The Carpenters and Negative Lovers. It also includes this gem by The Legendary Pink Dots...

Fate's Faithful Punchline

Led by finger picked acoustic guitar and Edward Ka- Spel's echo- drenched voice and eventually some strings, Fate's Faithful Punchline is moving, gorgeous and elegiac psychedelic folk. The Legendary Pink Dots are an Anglo- Dutch group, formed in London in 1980 and have since then released forty- seven albums, twenty- six live albums and forty- eight  compilations. And you thought The Fall were prolific. 

I included Fate's Faithful Punchline on my latest mix for Tak Tent Radio which went live at the weekend, an hour of songs that you can listen to here at Tak Tent or here at Mixcloud. Andrew Weatherall's fingerprints are to be found elsewhere in the mix in the form of his remix of The Impossibles from 1991 and a Beth Orton song he produced that was a B-side on the Someone's Daughter CD single. 

• Alex Kassian: Spirit Of Eden
• Martin Duffy: Promenading
• Eden Ahbez: Full Moon
• 10:40: Ninety- Now
• Coyote: Nothing Rests
• David Holmes: No- One Is Smarter Than History
• Gal Costa: Baby
• The Impossibles: The Drum (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• A Certain Ratio: Houses In Motion (Version 1)
• Ultramarine: Stella
• Beth Orton: It’s This I Find I Am
• The Legendary Pink Dots: Fate’s Faithful Punchline

Martin Duffy

Coming quickly after the news of Terry Hall's death came the news that Martin Duffy had died aged fifty five following an accident at his home. Martin was the keyboard player in Primal Scream from 1989 onwards and before that was in Felt. He played Knebworth in 1996 with The Charlatans when they were reeling from the death of their organ/ keyboard player Rob Collins, an act Tim Burgess has said meant the band was actually able to go on. Martin recorded a solo album a few years ago released on Tim's O Genesis label and made a superb EP with Steve Mason as Alien Stadium in 2017. More than that, Martin has been described all over the various obituaries and tributes as a sweet, lovely, quiet and unassuming man who, when on tour, loved to take in museums and neolithic standing stones- he seems like a man after my own heart. 

I've seen Primal Scream in venues large and tiny since 1989, from the cellar club that was Planet X in Liverpool when they toured Ivy Ivy Ivy to Castlefield Bowl in Manchester this summer and almost all points in between and it's impossible to imagine them without Martin's keys and organ. When they emerged from the various issues that derailed them in the mid- 90s and came back with first Vanishing Point and then XTRMNTR, the bedrock of the sound was Martin's keys and organ, his Hammond especially, as much as the twin guitars of Throb and Innes. He was able to play whatever the songs required and on Vanishing Point especially it feels like the band were grouped around him, playing off whatever he played. 

Given that this Sunday is Christmas Day I probably won't do anything for my half hour Sunday mix series so thought I'd put those energies into today's mix, a thirty minute tribute to Martin Duffy. 

Duffy Mix

• Primal Scream: Get Duffy
• Primal Scream: Duffed Up
• Primal Scream: The Revenge Of The Hammond Connection
• Primal Scream: If They Move, Kill 'Em
• Alien Stadium: Titanic Dance (Lynch Mob Mix)
• Felt: Primitive Painters
• Primal Scream: Space Blues #2

Get Duffy is the second song on Vanishing Point, a Hammond organ instrumental sandwiched between the speed freak mod- rock of Burning Wheel and the gonzo Mani powered scuzz of the title track. If They Move, Kill 'Em is the centrepiece of the album, a track inspired by and sampling Sam Peckinpah's Western The Wild Bunch. 

Duffed Up is Adrian Sherwood's dub version of the Get Duffy, from Echo Dek, released in 1997 a little while after the parent album.

The Revenge Of The Hammond Connection was a B-side from Kill All Hippies, a further take on the original Hammond Connection instrumental which was the B- side to Burning Wheel. 60s spy film soundtrack vibes. 

Titanic Dance is from the four track EP Martin made with Steve Mason which is laugh out loud funny in places, two men enjoying themselves. The track here, produced and mixed by Brendan Lynch, breaks down after seven minutes into some Planet Of The Apes tomfoolery. 

Primitive Painters was a 1985 Felt single, maybe their best release, a song pushed along by Martin's wheezing organ playing and adorned with Liz Fraser's backing vocals. This single is one of 80s indie's greatest moments. 

Space Blues #2 closed 2002's Evil Heat, the third of the three albums they made around the millennium that feel like a trilogy of sorts. Evil Heat doesn't quite hit the same heights as the previous two but its pair of Weatherall produced songs (Autobahn 66 and A Scanner Darkly) are superb, Deep Hit Of Morning Sun is a opening statement of intent and Detroit and Rise both rock. Kate Moss sings on Some Velvet Morning and on Space Blues #2 Martin not Bobby takes lead vocal, singing softly-  'On the judgement day/ When your name is called...'- as the Hammond shifts notes behind him.

R.I.P. Martin Duffy

The Visitation

Pic from the same source as yesterday's German techno image (a German edition of Elle I think, mid 90s Deutsche fashion shoot).

Music from Steve Mason and Martin Duffy who as Alien Stadium have gone and released an end of year beauty, a four track mini-album called Livin' In Elizabethan Times. Mason has had fun with the lyrics- on The Visitation imagining a conversation between the human occupants of planet Earth and some alien invaders. The visitors have had a look at us and decided we aren't much cop.

'Your leaders are arseholes
Your science is crap
And just for the record
Your planet is flat
We hate your religions
Your food is too weak
Your language confusing
You're far from unique
DIE DIE DIE DIE'



The entire e.p. is a blast from start to finish, engaging and inventive- guitars and synths, driving drums and rhythms, Steve's familiar doleful voice, the sound of two men having fun. My only complaint is the cost of the vinyl- fifteen quid, which for 4 songs is pretty expensive.

This One's For The Humans

I like this, yet another new thing for autumn. Steve Mason and Martin Duffy (Primal Scream's keyboard man) have joined together as Alien Stadium and have a four track e.p. out in December called Livin' In Elizabethan Times (including a song remixed by Brendan Lynch, who always hands in interesting work). Steve Mason has one of the most recognisable voices in modern music, married here to a memorable riff and a general sense of expansion and wonder.

Duffy

Not that Duffy, this Duffy- Martin Duffy, keyboard player for Primal Scream since the late 80s and before that in Felt (and briefly a Charlatan following the death of Rob Collins). Duffy has a solo album coming out, not coincidentally on Tim Burgess' O Genesis record label, and some of the tracks have begun to appear on line. This one is a spooky piece with some minor key tinkering and sawing noises and bodes well for the lp, Assorted Promenades (out on Monday).




Duffy has done solo recordings before. This song, a beautiful piece of hushed, end-of-the-night gospel was sung and played by Martin, and closed Primal Scream's electro-rock/terrorism album Evil Heat in 2002.

Space Blues #2