The 2001 album hailed as a 'dizzy, magical voyage of self-discovery'
THERE'S a nice scene in the 2000 film High Fidelity, in which John Cusack's engaging character, the owner of a Chicago record store, murmurs confidently to a colleague: 'I will now sell five copies of The Three EPs, by The Beta Band'.
He then slides a disc into the CD player: the opening track, Dry the Rain, fills the store. Customer: 'Who is that?'. Cusack: 'The Beta Band'. Customer (nodding approvingly): 'It's good'. Cusack (sagely): 'I know'.
Back then, The Beta Band — Steve Mason (vocals/guitars), John Maclean (samplers/percussion), Robin Jones (drums) and Richard Greentree (bass) — were in vogue, having been championed by the music press and finding favour with a large and enthusiastic fanbase and with such influential musicians as Noel Gallagher. In 2001 they were invited to support Radiohead on a US and Canada tour. They had three top 20 albums between 1999 and 2004 before going their separate ways, but recently announced a reunion tour. It gets underway in September.
The band, who first came together in Fife and Edinburgh and fully blossomed in London, released a debut EP, Champion Versions, in July 1997, on a small indie label, Regal Recordings, a Parlophone imprint. It opened with Dry the Rain, which as of today has chalked up some 42 million hits on Spotify. As Mojo magazine's Jim Irvin would say of it, the EP 'made a refreshing change from standard indie fare, displaying an acute awareness of feel and dynamics lacking in most nascent bands'.
Two other EPs followed in 1998: The Patty Patty Sound, in March, and Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos, four months later. In October all three materialised on a CD, The Three EPs – the one referenced by Cusack in High Fidelity. 'What makes The Beta Band such a powerful proposition is their ability to pervert the traditional campfire ballad in myriad ways, without appearing contrived … or losing its kernel of warmth', Keith Cameron wrote approvingly in the NME. 'Collectively, these 12 songs leave you gasping, not only at the frenzied sense of enterprise but also the combustible emotional depths therein'.
One New Zealand critic noted: 'When Beck made pop fizzy again, The Beta Band inhaled big time. In this collection … folk, hip-hop and the hazy psychedelic dub aesthetic of Primal Scream joyously elope in the whacked-out world of the avant-garde. Unconsciously addictive, this is an album whose halcyon overtones super-glue the listener to the speakers …'
Interviewing the band at the time of its release, Mojo's Irvin brought up the common use of the descriptions ''stoned' and 'lo-fi', which had studded more than a few reviews of the original EPs. 'Drugs are just ridiculous', Mason responded. 'We're interested in making music so good that drugs become irrelevant. And all this 'lo-fi' nonsense is just a farce. When we're recording we're trying to get the best sound possible'.
Read more Beta Band:
'You know, I find it offensive, the music business and most of the records being made in this country', he added. 'It makes me angry. Especially because people are taken in by it and led to believe that anything different is strange and weird and should be avoided. There's a horrible normality being fed to everyone'.
Live, the quartet were an engrossing and unpredictable act. In September 1998, the Independent's Ben Thompson witnessed them at a gig in the capital and pronounced them – with not a little justification – as the most exciting new British band to emerge in the last year-and-a-half by a country mile.
'You know that magical feeling when the music sounds so strange it feels like a secret', he enthused, 'and you look onstage to the people who are making it and then offstage into the faces of the audience, and you realise that hundreds of people are getting the secret at the exact same time? That's what the atmosphere tends to be like when The Beta Band play live'.
The 'strange, surging, pagan, deceptively simple music' was a shot in the arm of the 'prone form of the four-piece pop group', he added; the band filled entire evenings with a 'warped and wonderful hybrid of great music, terrible poetry, and alarming videos of strange rituals on Scottish hillsides'.
Expectations surrounding the 1999 debut album, The Beta Band, were therefore high, but it turned out to be more unfocused, and perhaps unfinished, than anyone had foreseen. In an episode that came to be much-quoted, the band even dismissed the album out of hand.
Mason informed NME: 'It's definitely the worst record we've ever made and it's probably one of the worst records that'll come out this year…But we can always do better. Next time. … It's got some terrible songs on it, our album. None of them are fully realised or fully even written. Half-written songs with jams in the middle'.
The Radiohead tour in 2001 allowed The Beta Band to showcase material from their second album, Hot Shots II. 'We never liked the idea of supporting people', Mason told Rolling Stone, 'but I think playing with Radiohead is a really good opportunity for us. All these bands from Britain have been touted as this amazing new thing that was going to save rock & roll. But I think our band and Radiohead can justify, not the hype, but the excitement that's around us in America.'
Hot Shots II is a consistently fine album, full of beguiling moments, from the opening tracks, Squares, and Al Sharp, onwards. Human Being samples Carole King's classic, It's Too Late. Gone is one of their enduringly poignant songs. There are layered vocals, and delicate sonic flourishes. It remains the high point of their career.
The band were happy with it – certainly, much more so than with the debut album – and it showed. The album narrowly missed out on a top 10 placing in the UK charts. The New York Daily News summed it up thus: 'While the Scottish foursome's music has the dreamy quality of ambient music and the sexy dub bass of trip-hop, it's far more song-oriented, graced as it is by conventional tunes, hooks and choruses'.
The Guardian's Alexis Petridis was another admirer, writing after an admittedly uncomfortable interview with the band (the quartet had a reputation, back then, as occasionally 'difficult' interviewees): 'By contrast to their debut, this year's follow-up, Hot Shots II, is fantastic. It boasts incisive songwriting, crisp production from R&B veteran C-Swing [Colin Emmanuel], and a thrilling attitude to sonic experimentation … They have finally produced an album they are proud of. They may well be among the best groups in the world. Yet despite all this, in Britain, Hot Shots II has sold no better than their debut'.
Then there was this, from Rolling Stone magazine (which had found the debut album chaotic and unwieldy): "Hot Shots II does its best to return to the epic soundscapes of The Three E.P.'s; the long grooves and easy melodies are back, and the band's tendency toward the diffuse has been reined in.
"The group's new self-control is evident on the gorgeous 'Gone', a minimalist ballad featuring only cooing vocals, lilting piano, and a quiet guitar and bass. 'Human Being' is an archetypal Beta Band number, tossing in horns, turntable scratches, harmonica, acoustic strumming and chant-like singing before devolving into a squealing guitar and organ rave-up. It's a heady, eclectic mix, and, like the best of the band's work, as satisfying as it is unique".
NME also welcomed the Beta Band back into the fold: "Despite its gung-ho name, 'Hot Shots II' is a dizzy, magical voyage of self-discovery - concise where its predecessor was unfocused, immediate where the pop urge was once lacking. The album's original first single, 'Squares', is still trumped by I Monster's incandescent 'Daydream In Blue', but beyond that, this sounds practically peerless".
Uncut magazine, for its part, was struck by the "monk-like close harmonies", which gave the impression of having been sculpted in three dimensions: "the way they soar, arc, cluster and braid is breathtaking". The album was sharply produced in a fully contemporary sense — ultra-glossy, big-sounding, with huge bottom end and tuff beats".
The Beta Band would go on to release an equally acclaimed third (and final) studio album, Heroes to Zeros, in 2004, before breaking up. They embarked on a farewell tour that year, the last gig taking place at Edinburgh's Liquid Room on December 5. For all the critical acclaim that had come their way, actual commercial success had proved elusive.
Read more On the Record:
In a revealing interview with the Guardian's Dave Simpson that November, Mason revealed that the band had subsisted for years on 'McDonald's-type wages' and had their domestic phone lines cut off. 'I asked the accountant how much money was in the band account and he said 'Absolutely nothing',' Mason added. The debt to the record company stands at £1.2m. 'I always imagined we'd be as big as Radiohead,' he continued, 'but it hasn't happened. I still can't understand why'.
Mason went on to enjoy a solo career; Maclean made his name as a film director (Slow West, a western starring Michael Fassbender, and 2025's acclaimed Tornado); Jones has worked on set design and costume for various films; Greentree turned his hand, successfully, to carpentry.
Twenty one years after the band's demise, Beta fans — and there are many — are delighted that the quartet is re-uniting for a series of gigs in the UK, the US and Canada. 'Sold out' notices have gone up at venue after venue. The first two shows are at the Barrowland, on September 25 and 26. The Three EPs is being reissued on heavyweight double vinyl this summer, too.
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The Herald Scotland
16 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
The 2001 album hailed as a 'dizzy, magical voyage of self-discovery'
THERE'S a nice scene in the 2000 film High Fidelity, in which John Cusack's engaging character, the owner of a Chicago record store, murmurs confidently to a colleague: 'I will now sell five copies of The Three EPs, by The Beta Band'. He then slides a disc into the CD player: the opening track, Dry the Rain, fills the store. Customer: 'Who is that?'. Cusack: 'The Beta Band'. Customer (nodding approvingly): 'It's good'. Cusack (sagely): 'I know'. Back then, The Beta Band — Steve Mason (vocals/guitars), John Maclean (samplers/percussion), Robin Jones (drums) and Richard Greentree (bass) — were in vogue, having been championed by the music press and finding favour with a large and enthusiastic fanbase and with such influential musicians as Noel Gallagher. In 2001 they were invited to support Radiohead on a US and Canada tour. They had three top 20 albums between 1999 and 2004 before going their separate ways, but recently announced a reunion tour. It gets underway in September. The band, who first came together in Fife and Edinburgh and fully blossomed in London, released a debut EP, Champion Versions, in July 1997, on a small indie label, Regal Recordings, a Parlophone imprint. It opened with Dry the Rain, which as of today has chalked up some 42 million hits on Spotify. As Mojo magazine's Jim Irvin would say of it, the EP 'made a refreshing change from standard indie fare, displaying an acute awareness of feel and dynamics lacking in most nascent bands'. Two other EPs followed in 1998: The Patty Patty Sound, in March, and Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos, four months later. In October all three materialised on a CD, The Three EPs – the one referenced by Cusack in High Fidelity. 'What makes The Beta Band such a powerful proposition is their ability to pervert the traditional campfire ballad in myriad ways, without appearing contrived … or losing its kernel of warmth', Keith Cameron wrote approvingly in the NME. 'Collectively, these 12 songs leave you gasping, not only at the frenzied sense of enterprise but also the combustible emotional depths therein'. One New Zealand critic noted: 'When Beck made pop fizzy again, The Beta Band inhaled big time. In this collection … folk, hip-hop and the hazy psychedelic dub aesthetic of Primal Scream joyously elope in the whacked-out world of the avant-garde. Unconsciously addictive, this is an album whose halcyon overtones super-glue the listener to the speakers …' Interviewing the band at the time of its release, Mojo's Irvin brought up the common use of the descriptions ''stoned' and 'lo-fi', which had studded more than a few reviews of the original EPs. 'Drugs are just ridiculous', Mason responded. 'We're interested in making music so good that drugs become irrelevant. And all this 'lo-fi' nonsense is just a farce. When we're recording we're trying to get the best sound possible'. Read more Beta Band: 'You know, I find it offensive, the music business and most of the records being made in this country', he added. 'It makes me angry. Especially because people are taken in by it and led to believe that anything different is strange and weird and should be avoided. There's a horrible normality being fed to everyone'. Live, the quartet were an engrossing and unpredictable act. In September 1998, the Independent's Ben Thompson witnessed them at a gig in the capital and pronounced them – with not a little justification – as the most exciting new British band to emerge in the last year-and-a-half by a country mile. 'You know that magical feeling when the music sounds so strange it feels like a secret', he enthused, 'and you look onstage to the people who are making it and then offstage into the faces of the audience, and you realise that hundreds of people are getting the secret at the exact same time? That's what the atmosphere tends to be like when The Beta Band play live'. The 'strange, surging, pagan, deceptively simple music' was a shot in the arm of the 'prone form of the four-piece pop group', he added; the band filled entire evenings with a 'warped and wonderful hybrid of great music, terrible poetry, and alarming videos of strange rituals on Scottish hillsides'. Expectations surrounding the 1999 debut album, The Beta Band, were therefore high, but it turned out to be more unfocused, and perhaps unfinished, than anyone had foreseen. In an episode that came to be much-quoted, the band even dismissed the album out of hand. Mason informed NME: 'It's definitely the worst record we've ever made and it's probably one of the worst records that'll come out this year…But we can always do better. Next time. … It's got some terrible songs on it, our album. None of them are fully realised or fully even written. Half-written songs with jams in the middle'. The Radiohead tour in 2001 allowed The Beta Band to showcase material from their second album, Hot Shots II. 'We never liked the idea of supporting people', Mason told Rolling Stone, 'but I think playing with Radiohead is a really good opportunity for us. All these bands from Britain have been touted as this amazing new thing that was going to save rock & roll. But I think our band and Radiohead can justify, not the hype, but the excitement that's around us in America.' Hot Shots II is a consistently fine album, full of beguiling moments, from the opening tracks, Squares, and Al Sharp, onwards. Human Being samples Carole King's classic, It's Too Late. Gone is one of their enduringly poignant songs. There are layered vocals, and delicate sonic flourishes. It remains the high point of their career. The band were happy with it – certainly, much more so than with the debut album – and it showed. The album narrowly missed out on a top 10 placing in the UK charts. The New York Daily News summed it up thus: 'While the Scottish foursome's music has the dreamy quality of ambient music and the sexy dub bass of trip-hop, it's far more song-oriented, graced as it is by conventional tunes, hooks and choruses'. The Guardian's Alexis Petridis was another admirer, writing after an admittedly uncomfortable interview with the band (the quartet had a reputation, back then, as occasionally 'difficult' interviewees): 'By contrast to their debut, this year's follow-up, Hot Shots II, is fantastic. It boasts incisive songwriting, crisp production from R&B veteran C-Swing [Colin Emmanuel], and a thrilling attitude to sonic experimentation … They have finally produced an album they are proud of. They may well be among the best groups in the world. Yet despite all this, in Britain, Hot Shots II has sold no better than their debut'. Then there was this, from Rolling Stone magazine (which had found the debut album chaotic and unwieldy): "Hot Shots II does its best to return to the epic soundscapes of The Three E.P.'s; the long grooves and easy melodies are back, and the band's tendency toward the diffuse has been reined in. "The group's new self-control is evident on the gorgeous 'Gone', a minimalist ballad featuring only cooing vocals, lilting piano, and a quiet guitar and bass. 'Human Being' is an archetypal Beta Band number, tossing in horns, turntable scratches, harmonica, acoustic strumming and chant-like singing before devolving into a squealing guitar and organ rave-up. It's a heady, eclectic mix, and, like the best of the band's work, as satisfying as it is unique". NME also welcomed the Beta Band back into the fold: "Despite its gung-ho name, 'Hot Shots II' is a dizzy, magical voyage of self-discovery - concise where its predecessor was unfocused, immediate where the pop urge was once lacking. The album's original first single, 'Squares', is still trumped by I Monster's incandescent 'Daydream In Blue', but beyond that, this sounds practically peerless". Uncut magazine, for its part, was struck by the "monk-like close harmonies", which gave the impression of having been sculpted in three dimensions: "the way they soar, arc, cluster and braid is breathtaking". The album was sharply produced in a fully contemporary sense — ultra-glossy, big-sounding, with huge bottom end and tuff beats". The Beta Band would go on to release an equally acclaimed third (and final) studio album, Heroes to Zeros, in 2004, before breaking up. They embarked on a farewell tour that year, the last gig taking place at Edinburgh's Liquid Room on December 5. For all the critical acclaim that had come their way, actual commercial success had proved elusive. Read more On the Record: In a revealing interview with the Guardian's Dave Simpson that November, Mason revealed that the band had subsisted for years on 'McDonald's-type wages' and had their domestic phone lines cut off. 'I asked the accountant how much money was in the band account and he said 'Absolutely nothing',' Mason added. The debt to the record company stands at £1.2m. 'I always imagined we'd be as big as Radiohead,' he continued, 'but it hasn't happened. I still can't understand why'. Mason went on to enjoy a solo career; Maclean made his name as a film director (Slow West, a western starring Michael Fassbender, and 2025's acclaimed Tornado); Jones has worked on set design and costume for various films; Greentree turned his hand, successfully, to carpentry. Twenty one years after the band's demise, Beta fans — and there are many — are delighted that the quartet is re-uniting for a series of gigs in the UK, the US and Canada. 'Sold out' notices have gone up at venue after venue. The first two shows are at the Barrowland, on September 25 and 26. The Three EPs is being reissued on heavyweight double vinyl this summer, too.
STV News
2 days ago
- STV News
Hay bales, frozen turkey and false teeth among 'surprising' items lost on coaches
Hay bales, a frozen turkey and false teeth are among the 'surprising' lost property items found on Megabus coaches. The coach operator revealed some of the items left on its vehicles over the years after the lost property office in Glasgow was contacted about 469 lost items. The items found in May included a guitar, Lego sets, a Winnie the Pooh, a jar of honey, insulin, an electric shaver, a historic coins and stamps collection, a Radiohead vinyl, a Neil Diamond CD and a lone trainer. However, the bus operator said those aren't the most 'surprising' items left on their coaches over the years. The lost property team have dealt with many 'weird and wonderful' items with one of the strangest being three bales of hay. Other highlights have included a cooking wok, false teeth, family tree documents, lone shoes and socks, and even a whole frozen turkey. Megabus said 95% of the items reported were reunited with their owners, and those not claimed are kept for 28 days and often donated to charity. Megabus receptionist Angela said: 'Over many years of dealing with an eclectic mix of lost property items, our lost property team have almost become immune to weird and wonderful finds, but we still get something handed in that surprises us every now and again. She added: 'The most important thing, of course, is to try and make sure we can reunite as many of the items as possible with their owners, and we work hard to do that as we know how frustrating and upsetting it can be to lose something while travelling.' Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Wales Online
3 days ago
- Wales Online
Welsh actor bags major Hollywood role in Batman blockbuster
Welsh actor bags major Hollywood role in Batman blockbuster An actor from Cardiff has been cast as the lead villain in the forthcoming DC Studios movie. Tom Rhys Harries from Cardiff, is about to get his big break after being cast in the blockbuster movie (Image: Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty Ima ) A Welsh actor has landed a game-changing role after being cast as the lead in an upcoming DC Studios' blockbuster. Tom Rhys Harries, who is relatively unknown in America and is still relatively at the beginning of his career, will take on the role of Clayface, a Batman villain famed for his shape-shifting abilities. The 34-year-old actor who graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama originally began his career on the West End, and since then has appeared in various TV series for streaming platforms Netflix and Apple TV+. The casting concludes a search that was primarily focused on young, British actors. For the latest TV and showbiz gossip sign up to our newsletter . This represents a significant breakthrough for the 35 year old Welshman, who has accumulated screen credits through his work on screen and stage in the UK over the past 15 years. The actor made his West End stage debut in 2014 in Jez Butterworth's Mojo alongside big names like Merlin's Colin Morgan, Harry Potter's Rupert Grint and award winning actor Ben Whishaw. DC project heads James Gunn and Peter Safran went to great lengths in their quest for the perfect lead star before finally deciding on the Cardiffian. They also considered Sinners' antagonist Jack O'Connell, Tom Blyth from Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Leo Woodall (The White Lotus), and George MacKay, known for his role in the war film 1917. Article continues below Speak No Evil's director James Watkins will helm Clayface, which is rumoured to be a pared-down film with a budget around the $40 million mark. Renowned horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan penned the script for Clayface, which is slated for release in autumn 2026 and is expected to start filming later this year. No stranger to a DC movie, The Batman's director Matt Reeves will produce, alongside Lynn Harris and Gunn and Safran. Tom, who has starred in the Guy Ritchie action comedy, The Gentlemen, spoke to the clothing brand Barbour about "making it". He said: "From quite a young age, I felt like I had a point to prove, and then you get older and I think success and anybody's definition of success changes drastically. "I don't think you ever feel like 'I've made it', but as long as you're turning up and like doing your due diligence with your work and engaging with things that are exciting then that's it. That is the thing." Content cannot be displayed without consent Fans of the actor commented on the video, sharing their support. One person said: "Da iawn cariad." One fan even nodded to his new role, saying: "Maybe after Clayface he might feel that he have made it " Another added: "Welcome to the DCU, Clayface!" Article continues below
