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at a glance...
Hometown: Edinburgh, Scotland
First recordings: circa 1999
Personnel:
Steve Mason -vocals, all instrumentation and sampling
Bands in the family:
The Beta Band
Notes:
King Biscuit Time, solo vehicle for Steve Mason, lead singer of The Beta Band, released his first four-track EP, ...Sings Nelly Foggits Blues In "Me And The Pharaohs" in 1999. His most recent release for Astralwerks, No Style, collects those four tracks with four new songs. The Beta Band once traded on enigma, drawing extravagant praise for records so hard to find, they were basically rumors. Their live performances featured plants and housewares as percussion, and their photo shoots inevitably featured them in odd costumes. But by the end of 1998, with virtually everyone in Britain namechecking them and curious Americans snooping around their door, it was time to let the secret out. The Three EPs was their first widely distributed collection of songs, compiling tracks from the Los Amigos Del Beta Banditos, The Patty Patty Sound and Champion Versions EPs. They planned a double album for their debut proper, but decided to hold for a later date the extended freefrom jam that was to constitute the entire second disc. The resulting self-titled LP was released in June of 1999 to disappointing reviews.
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King Biscuit Time
No Style
Astralwerks, Released 2000
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No Style, a collection of two EPs from Beta Band vocalist Steve Mason (aka King Biscuit Time), is a joyous album - bursting at the seams with creativity, disarming emotion and heavenly melodies. But as quaint a masterpiece as it is, No Style is also a bittersweet letdown. Why? An interesting question, and like everything to do with The Betas, bloody befuddling.
1998's stellar Three EPs promised amazing things from The Beta Band, but their proper eponymous debut failed to muster even the slightest bit of that original magic. Happily, No Style revisits that magic and proves that The Three EPs wasn't just a fluke. Maybe if Mason had spent even an ounce of this energy on his band's last album, it wouldn't have been the abysmal disappointment it turned out to be.
If The Beta Band had one song - nay - one half-minute chorus approaching the infectious brilliance of first track, "I Walk The Earth," it would've been worth purchasing. The song's organic rhythm, with its Latin stagger, sets the whole CD in motion - and though the remainder veers far from that groove, No Style never misses a beat. Track two, "Untitled," is a nice little embellishment of a throwaway motif from "I Walk The Earth" - fleshed out into a childlike midi fugue. It's a crime that tracks three and four, "I Love You" and "Time To Get Up," respectively, didn't form the chill-out denouement of The Beta Band - the album that could have been. Tracks from the first King Biscuit EP, ...Sings Nelly Foggits Blues make up the second half, and only after "Fatheriver's" frenetic junglism unravels itself into the grinding iron beat of "Niggling Discrepancy" do we feel like we're listening to pastiche. "Eye O' The Dug" could be the album's only misstep, but it redeems itself by virtue of its irresistible Beta charm – a bit of a Beatles' "Ringo" track, if you will.
It's that elusive charm that made The Beatles so great; why The Betas don't channel it more wisely is, again, bloody befuddling.
If you like King Biscuit Time, check out:
The Beta Band The Three EPs
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci Barafundle
The Beatles The Beatles
Beck Mellow Gold
Ian Brown Golden Greats
The Chemical Brothers Surrender
The Stone Roses Second Coming
Nightmares On Wax Carboot Soul
Happy Mondays Bummed
Super Furry Animals Guerrilla
-- p
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