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That Oasis and Radiohead, the two biggest names in U.K. rock during the '90s, separately made claims in 1999 about creating a "Beta Band record" (even though neither band actually did) speaks volumes about the impact of The 3 E.P.'s. With reference points literally all across the map, the Beta Band still managed a sound that was startlingly fresh, broadly appealing to fans of jam bands, indie rock, electronica, and Brit-pop, which is no small feat in and of itself.

Rather than a full-length debut, per se, The 3 E.P.'s is, as the name suggests, a collection of three limited-edition EPs which were released between 1997 and 1998 on the U.K. indie Regal Records. As such, the songs display an off-the-cuff charm which is as refreshing as it is unforced, revealing a natural progression by the band from humble folk/indie rock beginnings ("Dry the Rain," made famous in a brilliant scene in 2000's High Fidelity) to full-out psychedelic pop endings ("Needles in My Eye").

Throughout The 3 E.P.'s, rather than employing the typical verse-chorus-verse song structure exhausted by '90s alternative rock, the Beta Band successfully mines Krautrock, the Canterbury Scene, hip-hop drum loops, and even '70s funk and soul to build their songs around infectious beats, grooves, and melodies. And while many of the songs cause instant head-bobbing (witness High Fidelity), they are also helped along by Stephen Mason's alternately mantra-like and free-association vocal lines, which also manage to display a trace of sadness and introspection amid hippie-ish come-together sentiments. 

Despite a couple of experimental clunkers (the overly long instrumental "Monolith" and the rap during "The House Song"), it is precisely the Beta Band's skill at juxtaposition which prevents The 3 E.P.'s in being merely an exercise in met expectations (like the vast majority of '90s alternative rock). Although much of the album's popularity stemmed from its contrast with the tedious state of music upon its release, The 3 E.P.'s indeed transcends on many levels. Only a band without anything to lose or gain could create music like this, and in the end eclecticism has and will rarely sound better. — (via AllMusic)

At a key moment in Let It Beta—a fly-on-the-wall chronicle of the sessions for Heroes to Zeros, the final bow from beloved Edinburgh oddballs the Beta Band—the business of making music creeps into the frame. The label is looking for a single, for artwork approval, for anything, and the Betas won’t budge. The Nigel Godrich-mixed Heroes arrived to near-universal praise but fair-to-middling sales, the fate of most every other Beta Band record. They broke up less than a year later, amid rumors they were in hock to the label for 1.2 million pounds. “Bands like us should be the norm,” frontman Steve Mason sneered to The Guardian in 2001. “There should be something really crazy, like… a guy whose album is the sound of him sawing his limbs off with a rusty spoon. And he only makes four albums: one for each arm and one for each leg.”

The Beta Band never got around to that fourth album. By the time they bowed out in 2004, they had the air of a band the industry had found, salivated over, and torn apart limb by limb. The Betas were never huge; their second album spent precisely one week on the U.S. charts, peaking at No. 200. Still, there was a period right around 2002 when no Case Logic was complete without “Beta Band” scrawled across at least one Verbatim CD-R.

But their career always moved in fits and starts: Their label insisted on spackling their rush-released debut in a thick coat of paisley, leading Mason to call it “fucking awful.” They gave famously standoffish interviews. They came at their label boss at every opportunity, even namechecking the unlucky sod during a song. They carried themselves at once like a band who wanted to be very famous and a band who just wanted to be left the hell alone. In that push-and-pull—between all-out experimentation and commercial appeal, delicate songcraft and wild-eyed sonic tinkering, expanse and intimacy—the Beta Band legend was born. That essence is captured anew on a twentieth-anniversary reissue of their first three EPs.

After recording Champion Versions, the first of the band’s fabled EPs, the band decamped to London, where a roommate took their demo to Parlophone A&R representative (and future Warner UK president) Miles Leonard. Parlophone issued Champion Versions, the first and most immediate of the EPs, in July 1997. The Patty Patty Sound, the strangest, followed in March 1998, with the musical midpoint of Los Amigos del Beta Bandidos landing in July. After the EPs arrived as a set in September, the buzz at home and abroad was instantaneous. The Betas went from playing the basement of the International Students House in London to the second stage at Glastonbury.

The breadth of the Betas’ powers are on display through these Three EPs, from the rousing chipmunk hosannahs of “She’s the One” to the lonesome howls of the late-EP stunner “Dr. Baker.” Whether you came from High Fidelity expecting wall-to-wall uplift à la “Dry the Rain” or you’d been taken in by the wild-eyed press notices, The Three EPs were likely not the record you expected. Slinking grooves, oddball folk tunes, deconstructed house rhythms, exotic flits, yawning mantras, real raps in fake Japanese: It’s all swirling around somewhere in this multi-hyphenate hodgepodge. Maybe half of these dozen tracks meet the qualifications of what most people would consider “a song,” with the rest given to wriggling sound-collage and expansive Floydian drift.

Somehow, it all works. The British press was particularly keen on anointment in those days, but what separated the Beta Band from scads of contemporaries was their unbelievable range. A few turns toward the light, and they could have been Coldplay; another two steps into the abyss, and they could have been the Orb. On these EPs, they managed to be both—and all points in between. The EPs don’t relegate their more outre excursions to swirling one-minute intros, either. They take up serious space, even sneaking into some of the most pop-oriented material. Look no further than the choir of helium-sucking Masons that close out not-a-dry-eye devotional, “She’s the One.” Keen pop instincts, a good sense of space, and a penchant for self-sabotage: That’s the Beta Band.

Mason’s lyrics—all quotidian vignettes, pep talks, and good old-fashioned gobbledigook—are an ideal foil for the music’s spectral weirdness. Sometimes he sounds like Ray Davies just up from a nap; sometimes, as on the haunting “Dr. Baker,” he’s a one-man Tabernacle Choir, his voice ringing out over some great expanse. Richard Greentree’s elegiac low-end work glides between acid jazz and Astral Weeks. Synth player and sampler-tender John Maclean is everywhere and nowhere, laying out the terrain with big swaths of sound and then populating it with bits of static. The mark of hip-hop on The Three EPs has always seemed a bit overstated, but the lingua franca was certainly a tool in the kit.

This set never lent itself to the vinyl format, anyway. A 78-minute odyssey, The Three EPs is suited to uninterrupted listening. In college, we’d throw the CD on during a study session (of course) and wonder aloud if this was still the Beta Band halfway stop “The Monolith.” Getting up to flip these eight sides every ten minutes or so breaks that spell; there’s no way to get lost in the slipstream when you’re making that many trips to the turntable. If you’re anything like me, you’ll gaze admiringly at the deluxe edition nestled on your shelf while you load the record on Spotify.

These crackling, chameleonic EPs still seem to hold secrets, surprising and confounding in equal measure. A lot has changed in 20 years, but the very existence of the Beta Band—four rave-damaged, dub-inflected, spacecase pop savants, briefly given the keys to the kingdom—is still enough to spin your head. “I always imagined we’d be as big as Radiohead,” Mason told The Guardian in 2004. The music industry was not always kind to the Betas, but the Beta Band’s work after these EPs, built with an ostentatious arsenal of vintage equipment, wouldn’t exist without major-label patronage. Yet the Betas are precisely the kind of band the risk-averse majors would likely never sign now. Maybe Mason was right all along: Bands like this should be the norm. — (via Pitchfork)

Originally released in September 1998 on Regal, The Three E.P.’s collected the band’s first 3 E.P. releases, Champion Versions, The Patty Patty Sound & Los Amigos del Beta Bandidos.  Previously reissued by Because in 2018, this new vinyl re-press with Matt Colton remastered audio will be available on 2 x 12” black 180g audiophile heavyweight vinyl with artworked inner sleeves which feature the original cover artwork of the 3 EP releases. — (via Label)

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Label: Because Music
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Compilation, Reissue, Remastered, 180g
Reissued: 2025 / Original: 1998
Genre: Rock, Electronic
Style: Experimental, Trip Hop, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock, Male Vocals
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