Pitchfork

When it's not King Biscuit Time for former Beta Band frontman Steve Mason, it's apparently Black Affair time. "Possibly the best known and most discussed modern songwriters and thinkers," according to the act's MySpace (golly, seems we're behind the times here), Black Affair dish out retro beatbox electro and synth pop, slightly spacey, slightly disco, sometimes seedy, generally fun.

Because Black Affair prefer to shroud themselves (himself?) in secrecy, it's unclear whether it's just Mason making the racket or whether he's grooving in cahoots with some cohorts (presumably the former). Band members, according to that nutty MySpace page? "??????????????????"

Anyhow, what we do know: Black Affair has four tracks streaming from his/its/their/thurr MySpace right now, a video, and a podcast on the Olo Radio website linked via Poptones (home to Mason's King Biscuit Time).

The new tunes include seedy come-on cut "It Goes Like This", the spacey, clip-cloppy "You and Me", synth call-and-response ditty "Japanese Happening", and breezy, cheesy love jam "Will She Come".

The video, for a fifth song entitled "Subfuge", finds Mason having a field day with all the marvelous gadgets on his cheap camera. As the YouTube blurb mentions, this was done on zero budget, and looks like it-- although anyone who's ever run their camcorder output through a television and then filmed right into the television knows how much fun Mason was having. Check it:



The podcast has Mason playing a bunch of 80s songs that influenced his Black Affair project, including selections from Art of Noise, Depeche Mode, Playgroup, John Cooper Clarke, Yello, and 808 State.

As previously reported, Mason's fellow ex-Beta Banders John Maclean, Robin Jones, and Gordon Anderson have regrouped as the Aliens. They treated Earthlings to the Alienoid Starmonica EP in May and have a full-length called Astronomy For Dogs landing in March 2007, with the disc's first single, "Setting Sun", leading the invasion in February.