The Beta Band is the debut studio album by Scottish musical group The Beta Band, released on 21 June 1999 by Regal Records. The album followed the critically acclaimed compilation of their first three EPs titled The Three E.P.'s (1998). With high anticipation for The Beta Band, the band originally planned to record the album in four separate continents, but financial constraints slimmed the recording locations down; however, the album was still recorded in a variety of locations. The band approached creating the songs in a variety of ways, sometimes forming songs from single melodies, sometimes bringing together other strands of music, among other forms.
The album builds upon the experimentation of their EPs, and is often seen as a particularly intricate, experimental and layered album, with a variety of different influences, sound effects, instrumentation and song structures. Based more around beat and rhythm than prior releases, the numerous different styles and influences incorporated into The Beta Band include psychedelia, hip hop and blues. Vocalist Steve Mason described his lyrics as fitting but without narrative interests. The band also recorded an ambient bonus disc of two long compositions, "Happiness and Colour" and "The Hut", but decided not to include the disc in the final release.
Upon its release, the band made their dissatisfaction with the album public, infamously calling it "fucking awful", largely blaming time constraints. Upon its release, it reached number 18 on the UK Albums Chart. Critics were favourable towards the album, although many found the album particularly messy and disappointing after the EPs. In later years however, several critics have found the album to be underrated and have praised its ambitions. In 2018, as part of a reissue campaign of the band's discography, Because Music re-released the album alongside the intended bonus disc.
Background In 1997 and 1998, Scottish-based The Beta Band recorded their first releases, three EPs, Champion Versions, The Patty Patty Sound and Los Amigos del Beta Bandidos, which were met with high critical acclaim. After they had signed to Regal Records, a subsidiary of EMI's label Parlophone, the three EPs were released together as the album The Three E.P.'s in September 1998, which similarly was met with positive reviews. In 1999, they signed to Astralwerks in the United States and the label subsequently released The Three E.P.'s in the country. According to writer Ted Hedrickson, the band – consisting of multi-instrumentalists Steve Mason, Robin Jones, Richard Greentree and John Maclean – fused musical elements like ambient drones, trip hop beats and Pink Floyd-style introspective balladry to create their unique sound throughout their EPs, and that these releases "served as a fabulous taster for the band's self-titled debut."
By the time of The Beta Band, the group had undergone a successful, quick American tour while having become known in Britain for their live performances. Their gigs typically featured films, a DJ set that they would perform before the show, and quirky on-stage sampling from Maclean. Although anticipation for the band's official debut album was high, Maclean later admitted they were "sure a bit worried about doing an album." They would later tour in the United States in promotion of The Beta Band.
Writing and recording Each song on the album was approached differently; some songs the band developed from a single idea or melody, while the chords and melodies of others were developed beforehand. Robin Jones stated "We never really had a master plan ... after we did a song, we turned around and tried to do exactly the opposite. The most exciting songs were the ones where we were making something out of nothing." Describing his lyrics for the record, vocalist Steve Mason explained he typically just followed "the rhythms of the songs, more like a percussionist", and mentioned that the songs "don't really tell a story. It's just words that go in there. They mean something, but they don't mean…anything." Despite some critics believing some of the tracks to be pastiches, the band explained to writer Lydia Vanderloo that they were not "really into pastiche or irony or anything", with Maclean commenting, "Everything's very serious and honest, hopefully. We're not so scared that we hide behind the irony that a lot of folks seem to hide behind these days." Mason later explained to Hedrickson about the creation of the songs:
According to Steve Taylor in The A to X of Alternative Music, none of the songs were prepared before the band entered the studio, which is where they were "determined to keep their manual looping techniques". The band's original intention for The Beta Band was for it to be a double album with each side of the LP recorded in a different continent, "one in Tokyo, one in Mexico and so on". The band tried to plan this with their manager and Regal owner Miles Leonard, but ultimately Leonard dismissed the idea as impossible: "it would have cost three-quarters of a million pounds or something and they would have lost the plot."
Instead, according to Spin, the album was at least partly recorded in a small hut belonging to Maclean's grandfather in a remote northwest part of Scotland, where the group found themselves with no room to sleep as they filled the hut with an excessive amount of musical equipment and homemade instruments. Sawmills Studio, Rockfield Studios and Jacobs Studio were also recording locations for the album. In a 1999 interview, Mclean clarified that separate sections of the albums were recorded in different places: "Four songs here, four songs somewhere else. You know, break it up a bit?" As with the band's prior releases, The Beta Band co-produced the album with Chris Allison, who also engineered it, although the band's manager later admitted he felt the collaboration was not as successful this time.
Ambient bonus disc In one of their attempts to "make something out of nothing", the band had originally intended the album to contain a bonus disc of two long-form ambient pieces, "Happiness and Colour" and "The Hut", both of which lasted over 20 minutes and represented the band's desire to "make a record of sound as a description for something like happiness, where a distinct first part gives way to a distinct second part". The band's idea to record The Beta Band in Maclean's grandfather's hut was so they could record the sounds of the ocean for these pieces, and during which they discussed the possibility of a quadruple album. After the band returned to London, they had with them several hours of audio that they had recorded, which were then edited down into the two tracks.
According to Craig McLean of Spin, "both sounded a little random, like a radio scanning across the ether". However, the band ultimately decided to remove these tracks from the album. Jones recalled: "We liked some of what we recorded, but it's not really what we wanted it to be from start to finish. We felt the second part was lacking in direction." Nonetheless, this decision came several weeks after the band's record label had already included the ambient disc with promotional copies of the album distributed to various people in the music industry. Drummer Robin Jones felt the reason they dropped the disc was because they were rushed into constructing it in only four days, saying they intended it to be "an ambient… sound-piece. It’s really indulgent on our part, but I wanted to make it a musical story. In the same way Chill Out by The KLF is a story. So it sort of succeeds. It just needed more… conclusions. Rushed again." The bonus disc was eventually released officially alongside special editions of the album's 2018 remaster.
Composition Musical style
The Beta Band is an experimental, sonically complex, dense and detailed album. Unlike the band's previous EPs, which presented their varied genre influences in a less coarse way, the album is more abstract and beat-minded, fusing genres more abrasively, whilst being less influenced by folk music. Described by AllMusic's Jason Ankeny as "a brashly schizophrenic freak-out which weaves its way throughout the history of rock & roll," the album crosses a wide variety of musical ground which, in the words of CMJ New Music Monthly, makes it "hard to locate exactly where the foursome are coming from." Ankeny, describing the styles, said: "Pop, blues, folk, psychedelia, hip-hop -- they're all here, sometimes even colliding within the same song; the disc somehow sounds almost completely different with each successive listen, consistently revealing new layers and possibilities.”
The ten songs on the album rely on a snippet of melody, often sung and played on acoustic guitar by Steve Mason, but surrounding his voice are not only guitars or drums but many other, more unusual instruments and techniques, including samples, xylophones, sleigh bells, hand claps, spoons, and a diversity of bird whistles, including a cuckoo, with its songs integrating numerous tape loops and offbeat breakbeats into what writer Ron Hart called the album's "ambient classic rock jams and textured pop melodies". The music is said to disregard melody and other examples of musical theory such as verses and choruses in favour a chaotic approach. Jonathan Perry of Rolling Stone, describing the tracks, said:
As with prior albums, the band's early Pink Floyd influence is prominent throughout The Beta Band, although hip hop is said to be a more prominent influence on this record, with rapping, splicing and samples appearing prominently. Mason hoped, regardless of the "really obvious" criss-cross of styles on "The Beta Band Rap", the band's various influences throughout the rest of The Beta Band would sound "a bit more subtly involved". He also felt the record was both a conscious and natural effort, adding "it's just something we all really wanted to do", while Greentree himself described the album as "like a bird without all the fleshy bits and feathers." Stylus Magazines Derek Miller called the album a "testimony to balls-out astral tribalism" which features "some of the more singular 'alt-pop music' of the last decade", while doing so "in a veiled manner that never shows its hand until you’re four songs deep and still stuck in thought about the first.”
Songs "The Beta Band Rap" opens the album and consists of three distinctive parts, opening with a spirited marching band introduction that segues into a rap section whose lyrics recount the band's history to date in detail, describing the band's formation, signing to Parlophone subsidiary label Regal Records and "drinking champagne at EMI". It was described by writer Stuart Berman as "actually equal parts barbershop-quartet serenade, proto-'Lazy Sunday' faux b-boy braggadocio, and Elvis pelvis thrusts." "It's Not Too Beautiful" follows, starting with pulsating guitars that push "a wished whirlpool sound" and followed by Mason's multitracked vocals. According to one review, "the song seems to take flight on the whirl of a helicopter, with blades blunted and made soft by the dander in the air." "Simple Boy" is a quieter song, backed by atmospheric changes.