About Above and Beyond:
What do you do after your third studio album hits Number One on the iTunes dance chart in 20 countries? After the accompanying tour sees you become the first British DJs to sell out New Yorkâs Madison Square Garden â in fact, the first DJs from anywhere in the world to sell out both the legendary New York venue and The Forum in Los Angeles?
Where do you go after you sell 12,000 tickets in Sydney in one day, 12,000 tickets in Amsterdam on another day and raise over ÂŖ200,000 for charity at a sold-out Wembley Arena show? After youâve headlined stages at festivals everywhere, from Glastonbury to Creamfields, from Electric Daisy Carnival to Pukkelpop to Lollapalooza?
How do you top a global run of shows in 2015 that makes you the second-highest grossing electronic act in the USâĻ but the only act of any nationality, in any genre, that can get Breaking Bad legend Bryan Cranston to join you onstage in Las Vegas and, you know, play along?
If youâre Above & Beyond, after all that, what next? You go acoustic. Specifically, you go Acoustic II and record a follow-up to your 2014 album, Acoustic, which was a stripped back reworking of some of the biggest songs from your catalogue. But because youâre Above & Beyond, a London-based trio for whom progress is everything, you go further, in every sense.
So for this second collection of re-imaginings of your songs, you record strings and brass at Abbey Road, and you present these wholly different productions in iconic global venues befitting Acoustic IIâs ambitious, intimate-yet-expansive brilliance: the Royal Albert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, San Francisco's Greek Theatre, Sydney Opera House, New York's Beacon Theatre and the Waikiki Shell in Honolulu.
And you do that with a travelling party of 17 musicians â or, in the case of the Hollywood Bowl, you do it with the addition of 34 of Los Angelesâ finest classical players.
You are Above & Beyond, the UKâs most adventurous electronic band, and all of this is something only you can â or would â do.
Having spent much of 2015 touring We Are All We Need, Jono Grant, Tony McGuinness and Paavo Siljamäki were keen to maintain the accelerated momentum created by their third album. Yes, they still had their weekly radio show Group Therapy, as well as two record labels (Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep), and their publishing company and management agency, to keep the trio busy. As Grant points out, ârunning a label and having a radio show naturally keep us in touch with whatâs going on musically. If we didnât have those weâd make music in the studio and that would be great, but we wouldnât have so much context for it.â
But for a band who pride themselves on the song craft at the heart of their dance floor-friendly anthems, the untapped possibilities inherent in their music was a far bigger buzz â and challenge.
âWith the first acoustic album, it was guitars, piano, strings and vocals that were the bare bones of what we were working with,â begins Siljamäki. âThis time around we started from thinking: âWell, what other kind of things can we do?â So brass is a really big player on Acoustic II: we added a lot of John Barry-esque brass horns. And we wondered what interesting things we could do with the voices, so there are a lot of choral and bigger vocal arrangements than on the first one. Really, this album is standing on the shoulders of the first one. If weâd have tried this then, it would have been overwhelming and too much for us to do.â
âItâs funny, we originally wanted to do it literally unplugged, and call it that,â continues McGuinness. âBut even on the first album there were things that werenât unplugged, electronic and orchestral things. But we stuck with the âacousticâ label because to us Above & Beyond Acoustic means that band with electric guitars and electric bass and strings and horns and everything else. So it doesnât really mean acoustic in the old sense, and I sort of think weâve invented a new genre. Iâm really pleased with that.â
In late summer 2015 Above & Beyond asked genius Leeds-based composer/arranger Bob Bradley, whoâd worked on Acoustic, to assemble a new selection of songs from their catalogue, with a view to scoring, re-recording and reinventing them. In discussion with the trio, a core of 13 songs were agreed upon.
The Grammy-nominated title track from their last album, a collaboration with singer/songwriter ZoÃĢ Johnston, was an obvious choice. The addition of ukulele was less obvious, but the new instruments are an inspired addition to the wee-hours, orchestral-jazz rendering of âWe Are All We Needâ. âSticky Fingersâ, an album teaser single from 2013, is another standout, here re-rubbed into a stirring, swelling, 007-worthy love theme.
âThe great thing about this version of âSticky Fingersâ is that, before this, the only version we had out there was the dance mix,â says McGuinness. âThere was more of the song written that we hadnât included in that version. So the whole song is in this version of âSticky Fingersâ, and itâs the same with âPeace Of Mindâ â there are extra verses here.â
But while itâs in with extra verses, itâs out, obviously, with a lot of what made Above & Beyond one of the biggest electronic bands in the world: the beats and the production. And while harp and French horn help offer a whole new take on festival anthems like âBlue Sky Actionâ, what of the sense of momentous occasion brought by the bandâs famous âPush The Buttonâ moment in their DJ sets, when they invite a fan onstage to take the party several notches higher?
In Vegas last summer, that honour fell to one of the bandâs heroes, Bryan Cranston. Above & Beyond are such huge Breaking Bad fans that they wrote a song called âWalter Whiteâ. Getting Cranston to join them onstage made their headline appearance at Electric Daisy Carnival even more memorable. âHe was totally into it,â smiles Grant, âbut he was a bit nervous. Heâs done theatre but this was in front of 50,000 people.â
But making Acoustic II, and then touring it, offers no opportunities for button-pushing or banging beats. Was that a concern?
âAbsolutely,â admits McGuinness. âWe felt like we were kicking one of our legs from underneath us, which was the sound and the power of the dance productions for which weâd become famous. But over the years, the experience weâd have at our gigs is that our other leg â the songs weâve written â came through. Weâd end our sets with beatless versions of some of our songs and people were singing along at the top of their voices. That gave us the courage to do this.â
That sense of enhanced connection with audiences was apparent at 2013âs six shows the band performed in support of Acoustic, at Londonâs Porchester Hall and LAâs Greek Theatre (the film of one of the London shows has had over ten million YouTube views). Grant echoes that sense of intimacy and potency when he describes performing these acoustic/orchestral versions as âa musical holiday. It makes you realise how important the music is to other people, and gives you a focus.â
Clearly that sense of occasion and importance goes both ways. Most of this spring/summerâs six-week Acoustic II world tour is already sold out, including the Royal Albert Hall and both shows at the Sydney Opera House.
Are Grant, McGuinness and Siljamäki daunted by playing to eagerly expectant, packed houses in such august venues? In only positive ways.
âThat is part of the charm of this,â nods McGuinness, âit unlocks the door to these venues that we have absolutely no right to go to. An Above & Beyond electronic show is never going to happen in the Sydney Opera House. And thatâs just great fun for us as musicians.â
âThat we get to play places like this is proper bucket list stuff,â adds Siljamäki. âThis is stuff I didnât even know I could dream about.â
âAnd just to make sure itâs not a dream,â concludes Grant with a smile, âweâre going to make a documentary about the tour, and film the Hollywood Bowl show in its entirety â if nothing else, so the three of get to see what Above & Beyond performing with 34 LA classical musicians looks like. Thatâll be as much a thrill for us as it will be for the 18,000 people in the audience.â