POPTONES | QUESTIONS OF DOOM

QUESTIONS OF DOOM

Steve Mason

14/12/05

Steve Mason answers this week’s Questions of Doom about forthcoming single ‘Kwangchow’ and album ‘The Crunch’, the politicalness of ‘C I AM 15’, the style of the forthcoming record, dancehall, going indie and recording life post-Betas all in this week’s Questions of Doom

What are your feelings of your forthcoming record ‘The Crunch’?

I’m very happy and very proud of it. Y’know, I did it entirely myself, I wrote it and produced it and recorded it all myself and did it all in my house. Its probably the most satisfied I felt about a record.

‘The Crunch’, is the most relaxed Betas-related project since the Three EPs...?

It probably is ... there was no pressure, no deadlines at all. When it was finished, it was finished. I had the opportunity to do exactly what I wanted to do with every song. It was perfect. To go from ... y’know, with the Beta Band, where we recorded in this gigantic studio that cost a fortune where we couldn’t redo much because of time, maybe there was time, but we felt there was never time to go and do things again, to recording an album in your house and work whenever your want to work. It was really relaxed.

What influenced ‘The Crunch’

I don’t really .. I don’t really listen to music much. Most interviews ask this and other artists make a reference list for the album. I don’t really have the reference points. I don’t remember what I was listening to when I was recording it ... I had no idea what the album was going to be like.

C I AM 15 is your most political song - what has been the reaction?

I think people worry about politics in music. I think C I AM 15 got it right. It was a political song but it is also a political song that you can dance to and get into it. Its not overly heavy, you can take it for what it is or you can ignore that and think of it as a dance hall tune with a white guy singing on the top of it. Its funny, I read in a review that C I AM 15 was ‘space dub’ ... they just called it ‘space dub’ because there is a white guy singing on the top of it.

I did exactly what I wanted. I definitely want to do more political stuff in the future ... whether it is cool or whether politics are cool. I don’t give a fuck about being cool. Whatever, I want to stand up and be counted and I want to say I hate what is going on in my name and in America’s name and I want to do something about it. I understand apathy .. but apathy has to stop and people have to fucking admit that something is wrong when the President of America can’t even admit that climate change is happening—he shouldn’t be allowed to run the country ... !

Organisation is the key for the popular people’s revolution.

What has the reaction been to the lead-off single being a dance hall tune?

The reaction has been ... its what people have expected. In the Beta Band we used to DJ before we went on and we had been playing that sort of stuff for at least ten years. There was a track on ‘HotShots’ that was call ‘Broke’. It was kind of a dance hall sort of trip thing but still kind of fucked up. So yeah, I don’t think people were surprised.

People want to dance. And to be able to dance to a track that is all about smashing down the corridors of power instead of dancing to a track that is about hanging out of a car with your balls out is always ace.

The only thing I plan is never to have a plan. But you know it would have been easy to have the Crunch full of dance hall tunes. The only other track on The Crunch that is similar to C I AM 15 is Izzum. With the new single I wanted to do something different than C I AM 15, I didn’t want to give people the impression that the whole album is like that. Kwangchow, the new single is a great track. It has elements of odd stuff in it and its what I wanted to do ... a really good joyous pop song ... even though it still is pretty dark.

People always go on about your hypnotic voice. Are you trying to induce mass hypnosis on the populace?

If I could ... trust me ... I would.

And what would you do if you could?

If I could have a tenth of Uri Geller’s powers I would use them 24 hours a day.

You are releasing the record yourself. What has been the noticeable differences?

Its hard to tell because I’ve not done so much. The level of chain of command is reduced. It either between me and another or the thing being down to, at the most, two people. The management and record company are the same thing—you can have one conversation instead of having two or three to get something done. The feeling is more of ‘us versus the majors’ which is a quite exciting feeling. Its just odd ... from being in the majors and feeling completely powerless to being outside of that and feeling that anything is possible is a really liberating feeling. I’ve only put out one record and everything that I’ve done so far is all been really easy and in the terms of the cost of doing things ... next to nothing. When we put together the video for C I AM 15, the money was three grand as opposed to the majors saying that we need to spend thirty grand on the video and hiring people who need to spend that budget.

When the Beta Band split people were geniunely surprised and upset, what has been the reaction to the King Biscuit Time shows?

Really amazing. The tour that I did has been incredible. I didn’t know if people would turn up or people would be interested in what I was doing but they were. I thought that if people were to turn up that it would be only to hear Beta Band songs but they geninuely wanted to hear what I was doing. It was really exciting thing to have happened ... for people to come to a gig and hear brand new material and still be excited by it. Its not the best thing to do but the love and respect out there was really good.

What’s the plan for America? Is The Crunch going to be released in America?

Definitely. The deal with America is with Astralwerks and will be finalised over the next few weeks.