Steve Mason to perform instore at Pie and Vinyl in Southsea for new anti-Brexit, pro-immigration album Brothers and Sisters

Always musically restless, the former Beta Band frontman and King Biscuit Time performer’s new album, Brothers & Sisters marries the personal and the political in an emotive and uplifting manner. Written against a global backdrop of fear and uncertainty, it includes Indian and Pakistani musicians as well as prominently featuring gospel singers – Brothers & Sisters is in fact an incredibly joyous listen.

It will be his first album since 2019’s acclaimed About The Light.

As Steve tells The Guide: ‘It's been difficult because of two years of Covid screwing everyone over. I finished this record this time last year, but then because of the vinyl lead time at the moment – it's about eight-to-12 months, you just can't get anything out. Really you've got to knock three years off of that – in actual fact, I am quite prolific!’ he chuckles.

Explaining its themes, he says: ‘The album content itself isn't so much about specific politics, it's about a general holding on and looking for some form of spirituality that links us all together, and trying to find some sort of common ground.

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‘However, the way I went about putting the album together with so many collaborators from lots of different countries and races, the general idea was to make something that represented how I feel about immigration and all of the beautiful things that immigration has brought to this country.

‘This country was built on immigration, if it wasn't for that there'd be nobody here. Immigration is one massive collaboration – people come here with their food, their music, their clothes, their sensibilities, and then they meet us and see what we're up to and then cross-pollination goes on. What comes out of that is absolutely fantastic.

‘I'm just not of the opinion that these things are anything to be afraid of. The people who are telling the population to be terrified of immigration, to be terrified of people coming here and "taking what you have" – these are the people who are actually taking what you have, and they have a vested interest in keeping us divided!’

And he’s no fan of us leaving the EU either, or politicians in general. ‘Brexit is this backwards mentality, of pulling ourselves away from our brothers and sisters in Europe – pulling the shutters down.

‘The vote went through on the back of lies designed to galvanise and inflame those fears. Now a lot more people are slowly realising that they were lies.

‘I've never really understood this bizarre pedestal that a large percentage of this country put the establishment and the political class on. Those people are only there because we allow them to be there.

‘The only good thing Boris Johnson has done is to expose the falsity that this country is a democracy. It really isn't. If you can lie in parliament completely unaccountably and face absolutely no consequences whatsoever, that is not a democracy in my opinion.

‘It's up to us to want to change it, but we have to get over this strange fear and reverence of the establishment and the political class – they don't deserve our respect. They must roll out of bed every morning laughing their heads off at us, and here we are struggling to pay our heating bills, or put food on our child's table, and everyone's on strike.’

One of the album’s key collaborators is Pakistani singer Javed Bashir, who appears on the recent single No More. Bashir recorded his contributions in a studio in Lahore.

Steve, who is originally from Edinburgh, says: ‘I first moved to London around 1993 and I discovered Hindi film music quite soon after I moved there, and I fell in love with it. I always had it in mind to bring in some elements of the stuff I heard on those songs into my music, but I just never got around to it.

‘With this record, I kind of knew what I wanted to do and the sounds that I wanted on some of the songs. I knew of Javed's voice, because he sings on a very famous Bollywood film called Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, but I also knew he was a pretty big deal, so I thought it was a bit of a longshot, but if you don't ask you don't get. We found his management and got in touch – sent him two tracks, I spoke to him on Zoom and we had a good long chat getting to know each other, and he sent us these takes which we put into the songs. What he did is absolutely beautiful.’

‘Yeah, it's about reaching that point of exactly what I'm saying – it's like when an alcoholic reaches rock bottom, I think the human beings in this country need to reach that point, and then start looking up again and realising what the real issues are. And realise that, to use one of Dominic Cummings' ridiculous soundbites, we really do need to take back control of our country, in a real way, for all citizens of this country.

‘Your next door neighbour is not the threat.’

Steve will be undertaking a full band tour later in the year, but now he is performing a run of instore shows and signings with just him and his pianist.

He is at Pie and Vinyl on Saturday, March 4 at 1pm. Go to pandvrecords.co.uk.

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