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CULTURE BOX - POSTCARDS FROM HOME!!!
THE SOUND OF YOUNG SCOTLAND

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have you all heard the new album from the beta band off-shoot the aliens? its great! its like a musical journey over a few ecclectic decades starting sometime around 1968 then going to sometime in the 90s then back to 1972 (or something like that). if your a beta band fan ort not, cheak it out. its so totally awesome!!!



The Aliens: A Beta version of the band
The core of Edinburgh's genre-hopping experimentalists are a new band with a new album. James Mcnair meets them
Published: 06 April 2007 Independent

It's late 1996, and The Beta Band have just signed with Regal/Parlophone records. It should be a happy time for the young, Edinburgh-formed, group, but Gordon Anderson, the co-writer of one of the songs that Parlophone is most taken with, is not feeling at all chipper. "We were rehearsing in this mirrored room," he recalls today, "and suddenly there was this thing looking back at me, this frightening creature that I don't even want to describe." Anderson's hallucination was symptomatic of a deepening psychosis. Within days, he had checked himself in to Stratheden Hospital in Cupar, Fife, where he would periodically undergo treatment for the next decade.

"Basically, it was too many drugs," he explains. "In the early days of The Beta Band I'd have 40 magic mushrooms a night. I'd think that I'd changed into a bear or God-knows-what. The worst time was when I was in my girlfriend's bedroom, and I felt this red spirit coming up through the floor. It was terrifying. I saw the Devil; this horrible, ugly old man who went 'Got ya!'."

Anderson is recounting these horrors in a hotel lounge in King's Cross, his former Beta Band cohorts John Maclean (keyboards) and Robin Jones (drums) looking on quietly. This, it's clear, is the big stuff; the poignant back-story of The Aliens, an ace new trio that sees Anderson, Maclean and Jones reunited at last.

They go back, these three, and if the former two seem protective of the now-recovered Anderson ahead of The Aliens' sold-out gig at London's Scala, it's understandable. "Gordon's illness was hugely upsetting," says Maclean, "incredibly emotional every time we went to visit him. He was going through something nobody could understand, and we had to watch them giving him electric-shock treatment."

Away from Stratheden Hospital, The Beta Band's initial career progressed apace without Anderson. Together with Maclean and Jones, the frontman and guitarist, Steve Mason, and the bassist, Richard Greentree, employed a sometimes dazzling cut-and-paste approach incorporating bubblegum pop, folk, hip-hop, reggae and more.

Three eclectic, much-acclaimed EPs - 1997's Champion Versions, and 1998's The Patty Patty Sound and Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos - preceded the eponymous album that came out in 1999. The Beta Band was seen as something of a disappointment, though, and, shooting themselves in the foot, the taciturn, perfectionist outfit disowned it and blamed Regal.

In 2001, they regained much of the lost ground with their Hot Shots II album, the attendant, celebratory live shows ensuring that The Beta Band made Q magazine's "50 Bands to See Before You Die" list in 2002. Consciously or otherwise, the wry-but-painful title of 2004's Heroes to Zeros mapped another change of fortunes, however, and that August, the group announced their break-up.

Maclean and Jones are now quick to acknowledge the flaws in The Beta Band's modus operandi. "Stupidly, money wasn't an issue," says Maclean. "Not at first, anyway. We insisted on huge touring budgets, so even in a 500-capacity venue in Texas, we'd have a big light-show, a human beatbox, and a trumpet player for two bars of one song. At the same time, though, we were turning down these huge sponsorship deals with Budweiser." Jones goes on: "The record company would say, 'guys, you could save £30,000 if you just cut back a bit', but we weren't interested. We were a little bit precious and obsessed with retaining our integrity, sneaking about like urban guerrillas trying to be cool. That's the great thing about working with Gordon again: he's much more comfortable now with his talent."

Anderson claims to have written close to 5,000 songs. His father, Billy, a musician and bandleader who was playing accordion gigs from the age of five, presents a traditional Scottish music show on Radio Tay.

While Anderson's elder brothers picked up the traditional-music baton, he pursued rock, pop and dance music, quickly becoming adept on guitar and piano. As "Tomorrow", a A Hard Day's Night-Beatles-like gem on The Aliens' debut album Astronomy For Dogs underlines, he blows a mean harmonica, too.

Anderson first met Maclean at Madras College, St Andrews, where they were delighted to find themselves sharing an art class with 17 girls. "I'd paint Van-Gogh-type pieces and John was in to Cézanne," he says. "I remember sitting in the rector's office and him saying, 'Thank you for the paintings, chaps.'" It was later, at Edinburgh College of Art, that Anderson and Maclean joined forces with their fellow student and the future Beta Band and Aliens drummer, Jones ("My first impression of Gordon and John? A couple of hard men from Fife").

The trio's shared artistic background helps explain the self-shot video for "Robot Man", a simple, but wonderfully creative short in which they showcase their body-popping dance moves. The song is a funky, blaxploitation-style nugget, its promo video made for a mere £800. And the average cost of a Beta Band promo, I wonder? "Thirty to fifty thousand pounds," says Maclean, rubbing at the bandaged wrist he injured recently while snowboarding.

In the periods when Anderson was well enough to be discharged from hospital, he had continued to write and record music. Operating, curiously enough, under the moniker Lone Pigeon (The Beta Band were originally called The Pigeons), he released six intermittently enchanting solo albums while the band he had co-formed soldiered on without him.

Songs such as "The Magic Mouse Of Mupping Keep", from Lone Pigeon's 2004 album Schoozzzmmii - think Syd Barrett in trippy nursery-rhyme mode, were eccentric at the very least, the temptation to equate Anderson's numerous aired accents and multi-tracked cackling with the voices he heard in his head almost irresistible. The truth, though, was that, by that point, some kind of catharsis was taking place. But when did Anderson know he was completely well again? "It's difficult to say," he says, "because even during the worst times I was very self-aware. I'd try to say, 'Yeah, I'm OK', but the words would come out all jumbled, just noises. It felt like there were lots of different rooms in my head and I couldn't escape from them.

"The turning point was probably when this Christian couple who visited me in hospital told me that they had this deliverance ministry and that they wanted to pray for me. They were getting married in a few weeks, and yet they invited me to come and stay with them.

"I moved in, we talked a lot about my past, and without me realising it at first, things got much better. Within three months I had my own flat in St Andrews. I started going out drinking again and trying to get off with as many girls as I could. I'd missed out on all that when I was ill."

Maclean, for one, had not envisaged playing in another group after the demise of The Beta Band. With an eye on a video-production career, he had founded Bass Rock Films, but with Anderson well and ready to play in a band again, he and Jones found a "just for fun" jam session irresistible. Soon came The Aliens, the trio rehearsing and recording in a dirty, £25-a-day basement beneath an Edinburgh café, and drawing inspiration from sci-fi B-movies.

An exploratory, "so what are you up to now, guys?" telephone call from Keith Wozencroft, the UK President of EMI's parent company, led to a new record-deal and, in true Beta Band tradition, The Aliens released an eclectic EP entitled Alienoid Starmonica in March 2006.

The difference, this time out, is that the concomitant debut album doesn't disappoint; Anderson-penned tunes such as "The Happy Song" and the propulsive, Doors-like "Setting Sun" making Astronomy For Dogs a must-hear release.

"For me," says Jones, "Gordon always was The Beta Band, so my biggest hope for The Aliens would be that his songwriting finally gets the wider audience it deserves."

Interview over, I promise Anderson, Maclean and Jones that I'll handle what they've confided in me sensitively. "Head-case in band", quips Maclean, improvising a sensationalist headline for my piece. "Complete nutter kidnaps ex-bandmates," adds Anderson, smiling.

'Astronomy For Dogs' is out now on Pet Rock/EMI

The only album I've given 10 out of 10 over on Culturedeluxe.

 

Cult. It's almost as if that word was invented to describe the three-piece currently known as The Aliens. However, unlike today's common usage of the word - which is ostensibly to describe anything enjoyed by 18-30 year olds which no-one else 'gets' - this is a truly unheralded pleasure, something which barely any of that badly-tagged demographic will hear. It's a crying shame...this is one of the best debut albums I've ever heard.

 

Most Aliens press to date has concentrated (perhaps to a fault) on the threesome's time in equally 'cult' outfit The Beta Band. Keyboardist / DJ John and drummer Robin both served their time throughout the life of the outlandish outfit, while singer Gordon was an original member and co-penned the classic 'Dry the Rain' with the group before sectioning himself just as the band broke through to (deservedly) massive critical yet (ridiculously) miniscule public acclaim. However, it IS an important point to make. Frequently on 'Astronomy for Dogs' the genius briefly displayed on 'Dry The Rain' breaks through, reminding you exactly why the Betas were the greatest thing going in 1997...and it doesn't matter how many Stones / classical string riffs you rip off Mr Ashcroft, THAT WAS THE CASE. It makes you wonder if The Beta Band could have fulfilled their promise as nu-Beatles and sonic-folk overlords if Gordon Anderson had remained a part of the band. The likely answer, however, is no. Their output would have remained on the shelf, shunned in favour of yet another Oasis 'play by numbers' release or the latest Lily-Joss-Corrine-Bailey-Winehouse collection, hastily thrown out by record companies cynically following the paper-thin zeitgeist.

 

And so...it's taken me this long to get to the music. Why? Well, it's quite clear. I suspect you will never get the chance to listen to this album, and I've taken the time to explain why I don't think you will. If you are still here, then good! I'm going to devote the rest of this review to EXACTLY why you should demand this release from your local record shop. Let's roll!

 

Old friends greet us with a handshake, there's current single 'Setting Sun', a straightforward psyche-rock workout, immediately followed by debut 'Robot Man', their infectious white-funk classic from last year. From the same EP comes the still pleasant 'Only Waiting' and, towards the end of the disc, comes the immense joy of key live track 'The Happy Song'. This (relatively) short track still induces glee in all who hear it and it really should be prescribed on the NHS.

 

'Rox', which shares lyrics with 'Robot Man' and, musically, a huge chunk of Primal Scream's 'Screamadelica', is ten times more a baggy revival than anything The Twang have done up until now. However, it keeps a noughties foot defiantly jammed in the door with John's complementary electro synth lines. With it just weeks after Primal Scream picked up the NME's <em>Godlike Genius Award</em> I reckon Bobby Gillespie should be played this track on a loop to remind him <em>exactly</em> why they received it...and to knock the bad Stones impressions on the head for once and for all.

 

Starting worryingly like Michael Jackson's 'Earth Song' is 'She Don't Love Me'. However, it is only a short step to epic balladry - the type which does not require a fake f***wit being blown about as elephants are reborn about him.

 

'Glover' has found online fans and it's not entirely difficult to hear why. It is, at the same time, the comeback single the Super Furry Animals have been looking for since 'Demons' and the song Noel Gallagher was trying to write when he came up with the putrid 'The Importance of Being Idle'. The fact that this kazoo-toting / arcade-dreamin' ('<em>What are you gonna do when it's game over then?</em>') hyper-melody isn't the best song on the album is only testament to the rest of the content. Following it, 'Honest Again' is the sound of Queen recording the follow up to the Flash Gordon soundtrack, but with less tat, more feeling and, well hopefully, a $h!t-load more Brian Blessed.

 

Above all though, 'Tomorrow' is quite simply the most beautiful, laconic pop song written in the past, ooohhh, forty years. It's an early Beatles ballad mashed with a sorrowful country yearning. Such re-appropriation of sound in a modern setting is something only sonic cousins the Super Furry Animals could muster, and by the ending - which conjures memories of both John Barry's 'Midnight Cowboy' and the Ennio Morricone western soundtracks - your soul has been sold completely.

 

It's an ambitious collection of songs complete with a 'wigout' ('Caravan') at the end which, rather than a post-coital chill-out, keeps building you up to one final release, calling upon elements of what has gone before it in the disc and creating a fitting climax to this most enthralling record.

 

Cult? No. No. No. This is music for EVERYONE...not just NME-reading 18-30 year olds. It's an absolutely essential album that proves what is possible in the realm of songwriting even in these times of re-re-re-re-re-re-gurgitation (and it does regurgitate from everywhere!) Allow The Aliens to invade your CD collection - it's an abduction you'll welcome.

Cult? No. No. No. This is music for EVERYONE...not just NME-reading 18-30 year olds. It's an absolutely essential album that proves what is possible in the realm of songwriting even in these times of re-re-re-re-re-re-gurgitation (and it does regurgitate from everywhere!)

 

Man i agree with you totally!!!