[offramp]

Scotsman article on Black Affair

http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1654682007

Past remastered
DAVID POLLOCK

IT WAS a pleasure to finally conduct the interview you're about to read. Having heard good things about Black Affair, the new project from former Beta Band singer Steve Mason, I contacted him via his MySpace page some months back in the hope of arranging a chat. "Sure," he promptly replied. "But, Black Affair has nothing to do with The Beta Band, King Biscuit Time or the name Steve Mason. None of these can be mentioned in the article. I want no connection with my past. This is new." Eager to please but doubtful of the credibility of such a feature, I was forced to tell him so - and heard nothing more.

Classic pop music has always thrived on its maverick spirit, and that's something artists can only earn for themselves. The true maverick - in the face of aggressive marketing strategies and the fleeting notoriety of racked-up column inches in the tabloids - will build a reputation both on the strength of their music and the dependability of their own personality. That's why, in recent years, people such as Morrissey, Ian Brown, Noel Gallagher and Bobby Gillespie have built fanbases who hang on their every word as much as they do their recorded releases.

As the above exchange perhaps helps demonstrate, we can also add Steve Mason to that list. The Fife-based singer's sporadic and largely unheralded musical presence since the split of his old band in 2004 hasn't dulled his followers' appetites, yet some of the more notable events of Mason's recent career haven't been of the amusing variety, nor have they been welcomed by the singer.

Last year, on the eve of a national tour with his post-Beta Band project King Biscuit Time (an alias he had, in fact, released under throughout the band's life), Mason cancelled all dates and announced on his MySpace page that he was quitting the music industry. Having been reported on by various news sites, this turn of events caused an outpouring of concern from fans, not least when it emerged that Mason was undergoing a particularly strong episode of the depression with which he has continually struggled.

Yet now - in an interview arranged by more traditional routes, now that he has a press officer - Mason seems cheerful and reinvigorated, and excited by the possibilities of his new project. "Things have happened over the last year for a lot of different reasons," he says, "but I've put a lot of work into myself mentally, and I had a lot of help from people. Yeah, I feel finally, after a few years, that I can say I'm happy, without seeing the devil bearing down over my shoulder with a huge pickaxe. I feel happy, and that's quite a big step for someone like me."

He's also, thankfully, happy to speak about his past musical lives, but does it make him feel frustrated or hemmed-in that people can't discuss his current work without making assumptions based on what he used to do?

"Not really," says Mason, "I think I've already established myself as the kind of artist that nobody knows what the f*** I'm going to do next. Even in that group [oddly, he doesn't once refer to The Beta Band by name] I was always trying to push sounds wherever they could go, we were always trying to do something different. So... I don't know, it just depends how narrow-minded the person is that you're talking to. If it's someone who really got what I've been doing all these years, I don't think they'd be particularly surprised that I'm back with something different again. But I don't really care, I just want to do something that's exciting to me and that feels kind of relevant now, that gets my juices flowing."

What, then, of King Biscuit Time, who released one critically admired album, Black Gold, before disbanding?

"I just felt that it was too close to what I'd done before," he says. "It felt like a very post-previous-band situation. I'm very proud of Black Gold, but I really wanted to do something totally different, to make myself excited about what I was doing again. It would have been very easy to rest on the King Biscuit Time thing, but I've never really wanted to do that. It's never been a job for me, it's always been an artistic pursuit, I've always wanted to stretch myself in a way I've never done before. I've never made purely electronic music before, and I've never gone all-out to make pop music either. That's what I'm doing now, electro-pop, and I'm finding it really exciting."

That excitement translates itself to the music and the live set. Naming the obscurist 1980s electro of Kleer, the currently undiscovered electro-funk of LA's J*Davey and the early-90s R'n'B of Jodeci and Montell Jordan as influences, Mason has created a minimal but richly dancefloor-friendly electro sound with Black Affair. The live version is similarly pared down - just Mason, his iPod and a live bassist (formerly Simon Jones until he "went back to his day job" with the newly reformed Verve, now Edinburgh musician Tom Nicol) - yet his charismatic and distinctively voiced, rhythmic delivery make it effortlessly entertaining.

Having played constantly but with a minimum of fanfare around the country over the last few months (including a few support dates for New Young Pony Club), Mason seems most inspired by the reaction he's been getting at club dates, particularly in London. "Definitely in this country," he says, "people go to clubs to dance, and if they go to a gig they go there to stand and watch the band. So I'm not sure a gig is really the best place for me. The crowd don't appreciate it any the less, I don't think, but I like to see people dance.

"Previous bands I've been in have tried to bring in that whole club aspect, DJs before we went on and all that, but I don't think everyone necessarily got it. Yet I'm deliberately trying not to use any references to things I've done in the past, because I'm kind of bored with all of that. To be honest, most of the people who are doing this kind of music nowadays, you've never heard of them anyway."

In this respect, Mason is united with his manager - Creation Records founder and sometime music industry revolutionary Alan McGee - in his love for the democratising of music by the internet.

"I've never really wanted to be what I've become," says Mason, "which is an underground, influential artist, who a lot of people know, but who has never crossed over. I always wanted to smash into the mainstream, to bring what I see as being some sort of relevance and realism into popular music.

"But, y'know, things have changed a lot over the last two or three years, and outlets that had the British music industry sewn up five years ago - Top of the Pops, Radio 1, the NME - just don't any more. MySpace and the blogs on the net, that's where people get their music now, so it's a lot easier for people like me to get music out there. It's almost like a revolution's taking place."

A revolution in which Mason is happy to be in the vanguard.

• Black Affair play Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen, 10 November. The single Tak! Attack! is out on 22 October. The album Pleasure Pressure Point will be out in early 2008.