Steve Mason

Scottish vocalist, composer, and studio hand Steve Mason first attracted widespread critical notice toward the end of the 1990s through his membership in the Beta Band, a cult favorite among indie listeners. The group’s inventive collage-style songcraft and defiant stance earned them a reputation for notoriety with both fans and the British music press in the years after Brit-pop, a standing cemented by 1998’s The Three EP’s and 2001’s Hot Shots II. While the Beta Band were still active and in the decade after their 2004 dissolution, Mason also issued material as King Biscuit Time before embarking on a full solo trajectory that included the widely praised 2013 release Monkey Minds in the Devil’s Time and 2019’s About the Light. His powerful fifth album under his own name, Brothers & Sisters, arrived in 2023 and confronted the current political climate head-on.

Mason originally assembled the Beta Band in the mid-1990s as a duo alongside fellow Fife native Gordon Anderson, known as Lone Pigeon, though Anderson’s tenure proved brief. Once he departed, the lineup settled around Robin Jones on drums, John Maclean handling keyboards, sampler, and turntables, and Richard Greentree on bass, with Mason thereafter functioning as the band’s de facto leader. Early acclaim arrived via a trio of EPs issued on Regal that paved the way for the group’s well-received 1999 debut album The Beta Band. Their profile rose further when John Cusack referenced them in the film High Fidelity, with his character asserting—and then demonstrating—that spinning a single cut from the EP collection The Three E.P.’s would instantly move five copies. Greater praise greeted the follow-up Hot Shots II, yet the band split shortly after issuing their third album, 2004’s Heroes to Zeros.

Mason had already launched the King Biscuit Time outlet in late 1998. In the eighteen months after the Beta Band ended, he put out two King Biscuit singles—one of which, “C I AM 15,” peaked at number 67 on the British charts—alongside the 2006 full-length Black Gold. The following year he began an electronica venture called Black Affair, resulting in the techno-leaning Pleasure Pressure Point, released on V2 in 2008. Stepping forward under his own name for the first time, he delivered the proper solo debut Boys Outside in 2010. Issued on the Domino-affiliated Double Six imprint with production assistance from Richard X, the record merged elements of the Beta Band’s sound with a more polished and emotionally direct approach to songwriting. A dub reworking arrived a year later when he and Dennis Bovell issued Ghosts Outside.

Early 2013 brought a expansive set that would shape much of Mason’s subsequent solo output. Spanning twenty tracks, the lauded Monkey Minds in the Devil’s Time examined depression, politics, and human nature while weaving together numerous styles into an absorbing whole. His following effort turned inward, distilling personal feelings and episodes; Craig Potter of Elbow produced 2016’s Meet the Humans. Seeking the immediacy and looseness of live performance, Mason recorded 2019’s About the Light with a full band throughout the sessions, yielding a more natural result.

Responding to the surrounding upheaval, Mason returned to explicitly political material on Brothers & Sisters. The 2023 album combined anti-Brexit and pro-immigration themes with South Asian instrumentation and, at moments, a distinctly celebratory mood.