The first two Beta Band albums are the musical equivalent of your local arthouse cinema: you know they exist, you’d all be sad if they didn’t, but you just haven’t got around to spending any time there. Heroes to Zeros sees the said cinema ditching all that turgid stuff and block-booking Kill Bill Volume 2: it’s still ground-breaking work, but this time everyone will want to be part of it. Flakiness is replaced with confidence, noodling ditched in favour of simple song-writing and untapped potential supplanted by fully realised ambition. This is the sort of music Radiohead should be making, pushing boundaries rather than simply erecting them. It fuses funk with indie, programmed beats with organic instrumentation and stoned mantras with angry rockers. Space will make you dance; Out-Side, think; Simple, cry, and almost all of it will make you ask “Is this the most ironically titled album since Wham!’s Fantastic, or what?”

Mark Sutherland

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