Three extended plays of sublime genre fluid experimentalism. They’re also intrinsically linked to record shop culture… and not just because of High Fidelity!

A first for our Sunday Classic series, as this is strictly speaking a compilation album, The Three E.P.’s collates The Beta Band’s first three releases: Champion Versions (1997), The Patty Patty Sound (1998) and Los Amigos del Beta Bandidos (1998). Nearly eighty minutes of music across the three releases that genre-hops with dazzling and hypnotic fluidity. They were all recorded on a limited budget, utilising samplers and four-tracks with live avant-garde instrumentation that moves from the spontaneous to the hallucinatory. The budgetary restrictions weren’t necessarily a logistical imposition from the label (released on Regal, an imprint under Parlophone Records), the band instead rejected studio polish in favour of something much more organic and compatible with their DIY inventiveness. And that in a nutshell is what made the EP’s so magical in the first instance and what has given them such an enduring quality, from the first moments of the iconic opening cut, Dry The Rain, it all sounds so totally and uniquely like The Beta Band and no one else. The creative freedom allowed them to make a sonic patchwork of woozing tapes and trippy little loops. There are some pretty big dubs (one of the tips to the iconic King Tubby), pastoral folk hues, acid-trip whispers and even a pretty serious doof in the middle, but it’s the originality of all of those things organically oozing together that is just perfect.

Besides having been an avid fan since the EPs first dropped (and the band’s following albums, no matter how much they derided them), and owning more copies in various formats and colours than I should admit, The Three E.P.’s are intrinsically linked to record shop culture. In 2000’s High Fidelity, John Cusack famously brags to a colleague that he will now “sell five copies of the Beta Band” by playing it on the stereo (spinning a noble CD copy we’d note, whereas the film is predominantly focused on vinyl), acknowledging a customer’s assessment that Dry The Rain is “good” with a scornful, “I know”. The scene did nail the importance of shop culture and discovery, if you hear something good and you play something good to people in that environment, people will not let you down. The film was imitating life, with the band receiving growing underground adulation through record shop counters, ultimately leading to the compilation’s release that had not previously been planned. The critical reception had been glowing, but in the fledgling days of the internet and (Peel aside) with the lack of viable placement for exposure, it was shop stereos that led the ground swell.

Opener Dry The Rain is pretty much a feature in itself, but the lift when the horns arrive is nothing short of an out of body experience. I Know is one of the first big loops, with a baggy drum pattern clinking along under the whispered vocals and meandering electric lines. B + A then takes a very similar drum pattern but goes on a six minute odyssey. Dogs Got A Bone is gorgeously pastoral and plays out beautifully before the sci-fi bleeps and bloops of Inner Meet Me, which goes on another of the band’s patented slow evolving trips. Similarly, The House Song starts with a knotty hook that slowly unfolds before it becomes a literal house track which is a heart pumping high water mark amongst high water marks. (The) Monolith is as genuinely out-there as anything else, even sampling themselves as part of the fever dream that ends with a wild locked groove. She’s The One is another slow building euphoric moment, arriving after about five minutes at pure bliss. Push It Out is darkly pensive and rolls into It’s Over, which sounds like it would comfortably sit somewhere at the tail end of The White Album. Dr. Baker - one of the band’s most well known moments perhaps - is also nothing short of seminal, with its melancholic piano line under some of their most direct and affecting vocal deliveries. Lastly, Needles In My Eyes is a perfect closer, little gestures towards everything that had preceded it with swells of crunching organ drones and psychedelic guitars.

All three EPs stand as a testament to creative freedom and utter fearlessness. They sounded not of the time on release, and twenty-five plus years later they have become even harder to place. A collection of lightning-in-a-bottle moments and absolutely some of the most beloved music we own.