The first time I saw Beta Civilian live was early in 2013. They play loud, like maniacs, with bare chests, big hair and the most complicated set-up I’ve ever seen for a five piece band. When I spoke to Jamie Bird (voice of BC), after their set, I asked him if he could describe the band in three words, his response: “Sci-Fi as fuck” – with a sound bite like that I wasn’t going to quibble over hyphenation.
Since getting together in 2012, Beta have dipped in and out of the Bath/Bristol scene. They released a single, under the Bath based label Foolscircle, in October 2012 and since then have played a few legendary gigs at The Nest, The Porter (RIP) and a couple of other venues around Bath, most notably perhaps supporting Craig Charles at Moles. They were made Nokia Band of the Day in November 2013 just before playing Hootananny Brixton in the same month. Since then everything has been quite quiet in the Beta camp, until now.
On February 19th the band released ‘Overland, Overseas’, a before unreleased recording from their time in the Moles studio, back in 2012. It’s been released as a precursor for several future releases planned for the next few months and serves as a reminder of what a shit-hot band BC are.
The band have recently been playing to 40 – 50 people at a time in house parties around Bristol. The fact that Beta’s ideal audience are a bunch of twenty-somethings “blitzed out of their minds”, means that most of these people will love it for the 3 hour set, then have no recollection in the morning – “there’s loads of buzz and no follow-up”.
When I spoke to Jamie earlier this week, he described the band as ‘two separate beasts’ in the studio they are “super geek, prog/electro production values, where every beat is in tune with next” and live they are “pure brass funk party vibes.”
With such a massive and varied setup, “8 Synths, one drumkit, laptops, X-box controller, live samples, digitised live vocals”, it’s hard to differentiate between the old school and the futuristic, there’s no one out there like Beta Civilian and as far as I know there never has been. The obvious comparisons would be artists like Justice, Daft Punk and maybe Chromeo, but it’s more of a band experience than that “We bring a more human element to electronic music. It’s not one guy with a laptop it’s five guys playing different instruments.”
Beta fit into a niche that you may not have known was there. They have created a sound that transcends Electro and Motown and, with the imminent release of new material, they are about to make the world shit its pants… in a good way. This is progressive stuff folks, pack a clean pair of undies.
Watch this space for ‘Temple of Vega’ – coming soon.
In the meantime stay connected with the band here:
https://www.facebook.com/BetaCivilian
https://twitter.com/betacivilian
https://soundcloud.com/betacivilian
Triggertique 