The Three E.P.'s
by The Beta Band

Although the sound of the band has traces of Meat Puppets, Can and Pink Floyd, they nevertheless create a music that defines all categorization.

The first four songs on the album revealed the band's skills in merging the relaxed hedonism of acid-rock and the dehumanized shuffle of dance music. The opening 'Dry The Rain' provokes frigid hippie vibrations with its brand of roots-rock tainted by languid psychedelic Syd Barrett-ian indolence. The song reaches a crescendo of hypnotic orchestral arrangements and vocal harmonies.

'I Know' weaves softly strumming guitars into a delicate trance over a thick percussiive carpet. The third track 'B+A' takes this approach one step further by erasing the vocals, multiplying the guitars and drums to shoegazing levels, and stretching the melodies to become Tibetan drones. Track four, 'Dog's Got A Bone' is one of the albums many crowning achievements. This is a monumental colloquial ballad enlivened and spaced out by quirky noises and minimalist patterns of accompaniment.

The second sectionof the album opens with 'Inner Meet Me', a song characterized by surreal bleeps of synthesizer, followed by the rhythmic strumming of guitars which double into a vaguely exotic/tribal jamming studded with electronic hisses and stifled by subsonic vocals.

The wildly experimental 'The House Song' is a voodoo/techno trance beat with repetitive vocals, 'scratched' electronics and a wild assortment of dissonances added to the mix. The epic fifteen-minute 'Monolith', is the culmination of Beta Band's intense sound sculpting. This extraordinary work, veers decidedly towards world-music but combines it with an envelop of natural sounds, bizarre samples, organ and tribal drumming. The middle section closes with 'She's The One' which opens with a Laurie Anderson-style tongue twister and ends with one of the most powerful percussive base lines and guitar-led, organ gospel/jazz orgies in the entire history of rock.

The third and final section of the album sounds like a retreat. The exotic psalm and martial pace of 'Push It Out' creates a magnetic atmosphere of gothic suspense and religious abandon. 'It's Over' marks a return to the simple, low-key ballad, whilst the vocal harmonies of 'Dr Baker' approaches the intensity of an acappella gregorian chant, until a devastating break of guitars unchains a piano carillon that bestows on the song a fairy-tale quality of exceptional brilliance. The album ends with the organ-driven psychedelic trance of 'Needles In My Eyes'.

'The Three Eps' is not only the best album release of its year, but is arguably one of the finest recordings in the history of rock music. The album bursts with creativity, vibrancy and inventiveness, pushing the boundaries of rock music to new levels.

From Brad1770 TOP 100 COMMENTER 04/18/2019 04:01 | #235165 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

'The Three E.P.'s' is a compilation album of the first three releases by The Beta Band, comprising the EPs:

(1) Champion Versions 1997
(2) The Patty Patty Sound 1998
(3) Los Amigos del Beta Bandidos 1998

Recalling loving The Beta Band from when these EP's first came out I recently went back and re-listened to this album and its aged really well sounding as cool and relevant today as it did 20 years ago

I was struck with how much this material reminded me of Alt-J in terms of song structure and harmony's - I've realised my love of Alt-J probably began with my love of The Beta Band

Simply awesome (Edited)

It's sad that The Beta Band never got their full due. So underrated. Dry the Rain is such a great song. (Edited)

These guys are really huge, one hour twenty minutes I want to repeat forever (Edited)

From junodog4 TOP 100 COMMENTER 02/20/2013 00:32 | #65544 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

It's interesting how 3 separate EPs flow together so well.