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Interview
by SashaS
9-7-2001
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| The Beta Band walk on... paddling pool |
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The Beta Band headstate
With new album 'Hotshots II' produced by R&B wizard CSwing, The Beta's continue their odyssey of taking modern electronica somewhere very different indeed. Listen carefully...
If Saint-Just hadn't carved out a career commenting on politics he would have remarked, 'No art can be guiltless'. For every rapping-tattooist of Fred (Limp Bizkit) Durst's ilk, there's a benign befriender in the Fran Healy/Travis mould, for all the quasi-tomb darkness practiced by your Marilyn Manson's there's the usual poptart fare (Mel B and Atomic Kitten inexplicably spring to mind) targeted at tweenagers for an instant fix of pouty-poster-in-the-flesh fantasy.
Where does this leave The Beta Band? A Scottish foursome, apparently unsuited to this exploitive market, that strive for a dream as improbable as a perfect civilisation -emotionally charged music in songs that stir your intellectual curiosity while flirting with sonic surrealism and (often bonkers) strategies of transcendence. The Beta's claim to be an art and music collective and not a band in traditional sense. Their second album proper (the initial long player was the amalgam - and plainly titled -'The Three EPs') 'Hot Shots II' is bound to encounter equal difficulties getting to the public as the 1999 self-titled debut.
"Well, we know we're not an easy band to market," singer/guitarist Steve Mason begins, cutting to the quick with no-bullshit candour. "Fine, we're not in this business to make music that's easy on the ear but to inspire people... It has to contain beauty, something magical, it has to be effective the way no other music has done so far ."
Such lofty ambitions you have to respect, but haven't they been muddied by the band's own dismissal of the debut album as no-goodnik and request to their fans to stop buying it.
"That's us being honest," Mason flatly insists. "We realised we hadn't done a good job and felt obliged to admit it. We failed to achieve what we set out to and had to come clean about it. This album is a realisation of what we originally intended to create. But, we took longer time to prepare this release and refused to be rushed."
Polyrhythmic Pursuits...
A noble gesture sure, but this game isn't about frankness, it's about public image, hyped values and larger-than-Iife idols...
"We're not interested in such aspects of the music business," drummer Robin Jones chips-in, deciding to break his silence. "Our goal has always been to make music that anticipates rather than reflects what goes on in the world. We know what we want and are prepared to work long and hard to achieve it."
Band members are also involved in regular DJing, publishing their own fanzine 'Flower Press', have had exhibits in art galleries and make their own short films for each song which are used for projection at live shows and IV broadcasts.
"I don't do anything else outside music, Mason freely admits. "It's the other two who do a lot of the other stuff. You should talk to them about it."
Sadly readers, decknician John MacLean and bassist Richard Greentree were conducting another interview in the adjoining room of this drinking establishment.
Something borrowed, Something blue...
With six billion people on our overcrowded third rock from the Sun it amounts to a clinical delusion to believe any idea can be exclusive. As surely as it's five o'clock on a large chunk of the planet somewhere right now, several (thousand?) people are bound to come up with the same idea at about the same time, which The Beta Band recently experienced. They had a single ready (and promo copies pressed) but 'Squares' used the same 1960s sample from the Gunter Kallmann Choir as the new single 'Daydream In Blue' from Sheffield's I Monster.
"Very sad coincidence," Mason sighs, "but we discovered that they'd recorded it a year ago and decided to withdraw our single, although the way both of us constructed songs around the sample are completely different, theirs is much more poppsychedelic while ours is modern electronica. It still is the opening song on the album."
And as hypnotic as the rest of the songs. What would be the desired medication to compliment this music?
"Air," Mason swiftly replies. "A lot of people think we take drugs but we don't."
Naturally strange guys, then. Like the lyric says, 'I seen the demons, but they didn't make a sound, they tried to reach me, but I layed upon the ground.' Well, it makes sense when you think about it...
Guest edit: Deirdre Molloy
SashaS
9-7-2001
'Hotshots II' by The Beta Band is released 16 July on Parlophone
Guest edit: Deirdre Molloy
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