Steve Mason: The End of the Beta Biscuit Affair

Steve Mason is in typically candid and engaging form as he tells me about his forthcoming solo LP, Boys Outside. For the first time in a career stretching back to the mid-nineties, the former Beta Band frontman is releasing an album under the moniker – wait for it – Steve Mason.

"Basically, I just got sick of hiding behind loads of different pseudonyms," he muses. "It got to a point a few years ago where I had six or seven MySpaces, all with different styles of music and different names, which is a bit nuts really. This started as a Black Affair album then morphed into King Biscuit Time [the two best known of the aforementioned noms de plume] and now it's this. I felt it was time to be me really and see what happens."

Turns out that being Steve Mason involves going all pop on our asses (which is a good thing by the way, despite sounding somewhat dubious) by recruiting Richard X, the songwriter and producer who has engineered chart success for the likes of the Sugababes, Rachel Stevens, Liberty X and Kelis. "Even in the Beta Band I always wanted to work with a pop producer at some point,” he says. “My music now is nowhere near as out there and experimental as it was back in those days. But I still think it's an interesting idea to work with someone like Richard, who is Mr Pop. He's going to constantly have his eye on that notion when he's working with you on the tracks. I think it's worked."

The first single from the fruits of their labour, All Come Down, sees Mason rekindle his love affair with that seemingly most prosaic of instruments – and one generally notable for its absence in the canon of his output – the acoustic guitar. "There's something amazingly human about the act of picking one up and singing,” he enthuses. “For the three or four years before that I'd strictly been working with drum machines and synths. It was a nice change, so I tried to blend the electronic elements which I still love but also the more human element of instruments like the acoustic guitar, piano and the vocal."

Waxing lyrical about his relocation to London ("My girlfriend is here, my record label, loads of mates, I'm setting up a studio, people I want to work with and loads of people who want to work with me are all here. It just makes loads of sense really") Mason admits that the immediate future is all about touring his new work. A live band has been recruited, and the summer festival circuit beckons. The tour may also incorporate a whistle-stop at the Edinburgh International Film Festival as he coyly reveals that "a film company is making a documentary about me, which I think is going to be premiered there." Light on specifics, he divulges that the filming is still in progress, and it is to be a fly-on-the-wall piece that "sounds absolutely terrifying, because I've given them maximum freedom and control. If you're like me – quite open and don't have a problem talking about all kinds of different things – there's the possibility of saying something really daft. These things then become permanent when they're on film."

There's very much a feeling of 'full steam ahead' to Mason's patter, amplified when discussing a recent piece in The Guardian which was top heavy on personal details. "I think it was a bit of a shame that it focussed almost entirely on my previous years as a manic depression sufferer when that's very much behind me and I now have an amazing album to flog,” he shrugs.”The journalist should have realised that it's time to move on."

Move on indeed. The Guardian piece also raised the possibility of a Beta Band reunion, which Mason is quick to set straight by highlighting that he simply wishes to focus on his solo career, and an album about which he is extremely enthused. "I just meant ‘never say never’; when I was in King Biscuit Time I did play a few Beta Band songs. But, when you've got an album as good as the one I'm just about to put out, the idea of, or even talking about, reforming the Beta Band is just a bit daft really." With a light-hearted comment which manages to convey his optimism that this phase of his career could be the most successful yet, he remarks; "Maybe in thirty years' time I'll give the rest of them a call and see if they fancy doing it."