Black Affair
Pleasure Pressure Point
V2
Steve Mason (Beta Band and King Biscuit Time) returns with an all-electro effort. Is it time to admit that the Beta Band were always really one of those bands that were amazing in theory but in practice never quite lived up to the idea of what they could have been? Still love how the 3 EPs managed to get across that sense of indie boys discovering house music and trying to combine elements of both on a 4-track, and King Biscuit Time's Walk The Earth is a great single, but listening to Pleasure Pressure Point it's hard to get beyond the image of that scene in Friends where Ross is mucking about with the presets on his keyboard and totally rocking out ("wow that was so... wow").
It's not that it's terrible, just a bit.... preset - the inspiring thing about the Beta Band was how they tried to get a housey sound out of guitars etc; here it's like he's just found all the minimal 80s electro settings and sung over them, in a deadly serious way. It's quite close to the territory plundered by Neon Neon, but lacks some of the wit that made that work. On the other hand, if you're feeling all roboto and Berlin-concrete this may be the album for you.
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23rd Jul 2008 - Tumblr
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