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The Herald Scotland
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- 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.
The Courier
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Courier
Tayport's John Maclean on Beta Band reunion, directing Michael Fassbender and blazing school bus seats
John Maclean is waiting on a parcel when I call him at home in South London. 'I'm having a really boring morning,' he says with a laugh. It's the kind of dry understatement you'd expect from a former Beta Band member turned BAFTA-winning filmmaker who's collaborated with Michael Fassbender, Tim Roth and Jack Lowden. But 'boring' doesn't quite suit John Maclean. Not now, and certainly not in the past. Now 52, the Tayport-raised former Madras College pupil is in a reflective mood. His second feature film, Tornado – a genre-defying samurai epic set in 18th-century Scotland – is hitting cinemas, including a run at Dundee Contemporary Arts which includes a recorded Q&A. At the same time, in a move that few fans ever expected, The Beta Band – the cult experimental outfit he co-founded in the late '90s – is reuniting for a September UK tour, including sold-out shows at Glasgow's legendary Barrowland Ballroom. A North America tour follows. Older and more relaxed, John is reconnecting with the chaos and creativity of the band's past – but this time, with less pressure and a lot more perspective. 'We just started talking about doing something enjoyable,' he says when asked how the reunion came about. 'Not having to create anything new, but just going out on tour and playing the old songs, and enjoying it. Because we're all a bit older and wiser now. 'Maybe we felt there's a lack of proper bands around these days. And we were definitely a band. So we wanted to show people just how good and interesting we were.' If the film High Fidelity made The Beta Band a cult name among record-store obsessives in 2000, it was their genre-hopping ambition and surreal visual flair that cemented their legacy. From lo-fi collage videos and kaleidoscopic soundscapes to a live presence that swung between anarchic and transcendent, The Beta Band were always playing a game of their own invention. But behind the freewheeling creativity lay a constant sense of 'stressful' pressure. 'There was pressure all the way through,' he says. 'Pressure we put on ourselves to constantly reinvent and not just rehash. Eventually, you sort of run out of ideas. So rather than creatively stall, we split the band up. But we all stayed friends.' After the band's 2004 split, John turned his energy to film. He had already been drawn to storytelling as a child, watching Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies rented from his local Tayport video shop. That passion deepened through his work at Edinburgh's Cameo Cinema and by directing The Beta Band's videos. Taking night classes even before The Beta Band split, John began making shorts and searching for anyone in the industry who'd take a meeting. Through a chance encounter with an agent, he was introduced to Michael Fassbender. 'Michael saw some of The Beta Band videos and said, 'These are interesting. I'll give you a day of my time,'' he recalls. That single day turned into Pitch Black Heist, a short film that led to another, and soon, John was making his 2015 debut feature film, the award-winning Slow West. His new film, Tornado, starring Tim Roth and Jack Lowden, builds on that success. It's a samurai story with a Scottish soul, filmed just outside Edinburgh. Music never left John entirely. After The Beta Band, he formed The Aliens with his St Andrews-raised best friend Gordon Anderson. The Beta Band co-founder and musical genius known as Lone Pigeon had to step away from the original group due to mental health struggles. Beta Band drummer Robin Jones was also in the band. 'When the Beta Band ended, I felt Gordon had missed out. I wanted to give that experience back to him – touring, recording, just being in a band,' John explains. But soon, he realised that touring life wasn't right for Gordon either. 'It just wasn't good for him, mentally or physically. While I'm glad we did it, I could see it was doing more harm than good.' The story of The Beta Band and John's creative journey is incomplete without understanding his Tayport roots. Born in December 1972, John lived in Gateside before moving to Tayport at age 10 when his father took a job at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. His parents, both art teachers at Bell Baxter High School in Cupar, nurtured a creative home. He remembers Cub Scouts in Auchtermuchty, swimming in Cupar and teenage years spent commuting to and from school in St Andrews on a riotous bus packed with teenage tribes. 'The things that happened on that bus!' he says, laughing. 'One driver – I think his nickname was Budgie – would get so wound up he'd take us straight to the police station. I remember someone lit the back seat on fire once and threw it out the window. That bus would make a good film!' At Madras College, John met Gordon Anderson, and the two bonded instantly. 'We were the only ones who were really into art, and into music too. We'd nip into the music room to play the piano. By sixth year, we had somehow dropped everything except art.' They both ended up at Edinburgh College of Art. While Gordon leaned into singer-songwriter influences like Neil Young, John fell in love with dance music and eclectic club culture. 'I used to go the Rhumba Club in Dundee,' he recalls. 'There was this weird hip hop scene in Tayport too, people trying to breakdance, electro cassettes going around. 'When I got to Edinburgh, we started this club that played everything – Kinks, Stone Roses, Wu-Tang Clan, house music. That mash-up spirit is really what became The Beta Band.' John never expected to join a band. But after moving to London and sharing a flat with Steve Mason – also from St Andrews – and Robin Jones, he started looping samples – birdsong, old film scores, obscure records. Those lo-fi experiments turned into The Beta Band's first EP. Now, 21 years after the band split, they're back. The upcoming tour will feature tracks from The Three EPs and other fan favourites. The band is performing with their original lineup of Steve Mason, Richard Greentree, John Maclean, and Robin Jones, who John has been working with in the film industry. He's still close to his brother, Dave Maclean of Django Django, who's now settled back in the Tayport area where their parents still live. John now lives in South London with his partner and their two children, aged four and 10. But Tayport remains close to his heart. 'We've got a little place up north, and we're back in Tayport all the time. I was at the Tayport car boot sale the other week, digging for records. Some things don't change.' Asked whether the Beta Band reunion might lead to new material, John is cautious but open. 'There's talk of doing something next year,' he says. 'But it'll be compacted, because I'll be working on film stuff too. 'After that, maybe it all goes back in the cupboard for another 25 years!'
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Beta Band to reunite after 20 years for UK and USA tour
Alt-rockers The Beta Band have spoken of their excitement at getting back together for a reunion tour across the UK and USA more than 20 years since the group split up. The band was formed in 1996 in St Andrews, Scotland, and went on to achieve top 20 albums as well as the support slot for Radiohead on two US tours. The group also famously featured in the movie High Fidelity when the actor John Cusack plays The Beta Band's song Dry the Rain in the film's record shop. But in 2004, financial difficulties saw the group split, with their final gig played at Edinburgh's Liquid Room on December 4, 2004. The new tour features the line-up of Steve Mason on guitar and vocals, bassist Richard Greentree, John Maclean on samples and keyboard and Robin Jones on drums. Mr Greentree, who is the only Englishman in the group and lives in Portsmouth, Hampshire, told the PA news agency: 'It seems this is a twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity for which I'll be eternally grateful. 'It was an incredible time. Over the last 20 years, I have been frequently asked if I miss it, which has always seemed like an incredible question to me because as if that's not obvious. 'It's just what I always wanted to do, so when it ended, it was a difficult thing to come to terms with. 'And you know, when I finally did come to terms with it was when the universe seemed to have given it back to me. So it seems to have come full circle, which I'm pretty pleased about.' The father of two left the music scene behind to focus on carpentry and bringing up his two sons for much of the time since the band ended. He said: 'One of the aspects is I'm really pleased with is that my kids are gonna get a chance to see me on stage, there's a constant battle between me and my two sons about old cool versus new cool – it's an opportunity for old cool to take the upper hand.' Describing the band's peak, he said: 'I think the highlight was probably the American tours, I can't deny it was the tours we went on with Radiohead. 'We got to play the most famous venues, the Madison Square Gardens and Hollywood Bowl and a lot of crazy venues.' He added: 'Some of the gigs when they really, really work, when they really gel together, it's just an unbeatable feeling, you just have that dynamic, it's not like anything else on Earth.' Mr Greentree said that the band had kept in touch over the years, and a photoshoot at Stansted House, near Emsworth, Hampshire, was an opportunity to reconnect. He said: 'Just like the musical side of stuff is gonna come flying back, like riding a bike, so do the in-jokes. 'It is a really good dynamic – I think it's essential, not to get on, but there has to be a dynamic in one way or the other. 'We're quite lucky that for us, when we're together, it's a lot of fun.' A deluxe vinyl reissue of The Beta Band's first release – The Three EPs – has been released to coincide with the reunion. The new tour has been welcomed by one of the band's most famous fans, the author Irvine Welsh. The Trainspotting writer said: 'The band were pivotal for me in terms of my own musical journey, in that they represented a gateway back into indie guitar music, which I'd basically given up since becoming obsessed with rave and acid house. 'The emotions they induced were a kind of throwback to school days when you were very pompous and prescriptive about what you liked and derisive towards non-believers. It's a testimony to the power of the music that they could take me to the raw state of the younger man.' The reunion tour starts at Glasgow's Barrowland in September, with tickets for sale to the general public from Friday, March 7.
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Beta Band Announce 2025 Reunion Tour
The post The Beta Band Announce 2025 Reunion Tour appeared first on Consequence. The Beta Band will reunite this fall for their first tour dates in more than 20 years. On the jaunt, the Scottish post-rock band will be performing material from their beloved compilation album, The Three E.P.'s, and other 'other classics.' The tour officially kicks off in Glasgow on September 25th, with a North American leg following in mid-October. The itinerary includes concerts in cities including Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, Boston, and Philadelphia, before concluding in Brooklyn on November 1st. Get The Beta Band Tickets Here A Live Nation ticket pre-sale for select dates begins on Wednesday, March 5th at 10:00 a.m. local time via Ticketmaster (use code FUNKY), with a public on-sale following on Friday, March 7th at 10:00 a.m. local time. Tickets will also be available via AXS. Along with their upcoming reunion tour dates, The Beta Band will release a new vinyl reissue of The Three E.P.'s on July 11th via Because Music. The Beta Band 2025 Tour Dates: 09/25 – Glasgow, UK @ Barrowland 09/27 – Leeds, UK @ O2 Academy 09/29 – Bristol, UK @ O2 Academy 09/30 – Nottingham, UK @ Rock City 10/02 – London, UK @ Roundhouse 10/04 – Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall 10/12 – Vancouver, CA @ Commodore Ballroom 10/14 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox 10/15 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom 10/17 – San Francisco, CA @ Regency Ballroom 10/18 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre 10/20 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Metro Music Hall 10/21 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre 10/23 – Chicago, IL @ Metro 10/24 – Detroit, MI @ St. Andrew's Hall 10/25 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall 10/28 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club 10/29 – Boston, MA @ Royale Boston 10/30 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer 11/01 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel The Beta Band Announce 2025 Reunion Tour Scoop Harrison Popular Posts Michelle Trachtenberg Dead at 39 Tony Hawk Wishes Kurt Cobain Could Meet Their Shared Grandson Gene Hackman and Wife's Deaths Ruled "Suspicious" as Investigators Find No Signs of Gas Leak Pink Floyd to Release 4K Remaster of Live At Pompeii in Theaters and IMAX The 69 Sexiest Film Scenes of All Time 10 Pop-Rock Bands You Forgot Used to Be Heavy Subscribe to Consequence's email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox.
BBC News
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Beta Band reform for new tour after 21 years away
Indie rock group The Beta Band are to reunite for their first tour in 21 four-piece formed in Fife in 1996 and released a string of acclaimed EPs and albums before breaking up in 2004. The reunion tour begins on 25 September at Glasgow's Barrowlands, before dates in Leeds, Bristol, Nottingham, London and Manchester. This will be followed by a run of American group said they would play their 1998 album The Three E.P.'s - which collected their early recordings - as well as "other classics" on the tour. They released two further albums Hot Shots II in 2001 and Heroes to Zeros in 2004. The band said: "The Beta Band, as everyone knows, is an institution, like Bedlam, or the RSPCA, and as such has its own indelible stain on the bedsheet of Western culture. "It was the great John Noakes who said 'you have to shake it out at least once every couple of decades, if you want to know what the moths did.' "So with both those facts in mind, we realise the time has come to show the wall the Luminol, kill the lights and hit the UV."The line-up for the tour will be Steve Mason on guitar and vocals, Richard Greentree on bass, John Maclean on samples and keyboards and Robin Jones on music featured in Hollywood film High Fidelity, where their track Dry the Rain was spotlighted by the main character, played by John the band split following an Edinburgh gig in December 2004, Mason released music as a solo artist while Maclean and Jones formed another band, the also moved into film, directing Slow West in 2015 and this year's Tornado, which opened the Glasgow Film Festival last week.
