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above and beyond

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[[1L]] july 2011

There’s about three minutes of silence before above & beyond take to the stage at the hollywood Palladium. silence in terms of music, anyway. the crowd, an undulating, tentacular mass of raised arms and smiles and

anjunabeats t-shirts and slogans and flags and flesh, is anything but mute. Whoops and cheers and chants rise to crash against the stage in waves. When tour manager seamus Morley creeps up to switch on the intro CD, the roof nearly lifts off the famous venue. When Paavo and tony, two thirds of above & beyond, bounce from behind the thick curtain to take their place behind the decks, headphones clutched like rosary beads, to the strains of a driving remix of Massive attack’s ‘teardrop’, the reaction is primal.

la is almost a home from home for above & beyond. they reckon they’ve played over 15 gigs here. but tonight is the culmination of two years of preparation, working with design companies to create a stage layout and visual show that would blow people away. It seems to be working. the set-up is simple but powerful. seven by 12 metre high-def oracle video screens from floor to ceiling behind the Dj booth and to both sides show visuals that range from spinning triangles to fish and faces, while 136 lights – a record for the venue, with some of them worth $15k – turn the shiny, magnolia-painted interior into an immersive rave fortress. “We really admire amazing stage designs like etienne de Crecy’s ‘cube’,” says a&b’s tony McGuinness. “but when we thought about it we decided that the

Left to right: tony, Paavo

and Jono

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W o r d s D u n c a n D i c k P h o t o s Z a c h C o r d n e r

H o w A b o v e & B e y o n dt o o k A m e r i c a

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communication between us and the audience – celebrating the joint experience, interaction – was the most important thing.” the boys’ favourite element of the show is clearly the text facility that allows them to type their own live messages for display on the huge screen: ‘los angeles has never looked so beautiful’, ‘We thank you for a million goosebumps’. “We’ve come back to a show that’s about everyone in the room,” says tony, “not just us.”

the hollywood Palladium on sunset boulevard is one of the los angeles’ most famous landmarks, never mind venues. built in 1940 with the kind of swooping ‘streamline Moderne’ curves you see in the teardrop shaped Chryslers and Cadillacs of the time; giant balconies snake around a huge, sunken circular dancefloor. the 4000-capacity venue is a sell out; some fans have been queuing in the la sunshine for four hours before the gig to secure their position down the front. but then above & beyond have put the groundwork in. If the new live show is the culmination of months of work, these landmark shows are the product of years of some of the most innovative and effective marketing and fanbase building that dance music has ever seen. to conquer america, you have to conquer the internet.

We realIseD early on,” says tony, sitting poolside on the roof terrace of the ultra- swish london hotel with the city of los angeles laid out behind him like a giant

tray of overturned white lego, “that we couldn’t count on traditional media – radio, magazines – to come to us all the time. We had to get on with it.” From the start, they have understood the importance of the internet in everything they do, helped by the fact that one of their members, Paavo sijamaki, is as at home behind a computer as behind a Dj booth (“he dreams in the code from The Matrix”, jokes one of the crew, later). “From the beginning we had a website,” says Paavo. “We had a forum. We were always really excited about connecting directly with people who liked the same music.”

“and Paavo had the ability to code the website and build the forum,” says tony. “he moderated it and grew it into the biggest forum for trance fans anywhere.” Facebook and twitter have since been seamlessly pressed into service. Paavo recently coded an iPhone app in between gigs. the trio’s radio show has also been a hugely effective tool. ‘trance around the World’, on satellite radio, the internet, and 237 FM stations worldwide, has 30 million listeners each week. In December the group celebrated the 350th episode with a marathon eight-hour live broadcast from the Palladium, with a&b playing a two-hour set alongside guests like super 8 and tab and Cosmic Gate. “We had a twitter map where we could watch the location of all the tweets coming in,” says tony, “from la and the uK to hawaii and Iran! We became the number one trending topic on twitter. the real power of the internet is that whatever you are into: stamp collecting, sauvignon blanc, or sad trance music – you can find other people who feel the same.”

It’s the nIGht before the first gig, and we’re in a giant suV heading down sunset boulevard. Paavo is not happy with the radio, reaching forward to ‘get this shit off’ as yet more hip hop

dribbles from the speakers. It strikes Mixmag that this opposition to the music and culture that has such a monopoly on the us is perhaps one of the reasons la loves above & beyond. the music they make is the antithesis of hip hop. “songs about hummers, ‘bitches’ and credit cards don’t do it for me,” says tony. Paavo, suddenly passionate, expands on the theme: “I grew

above & beyond

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[[1L]] july 2011

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above & beyond

up in wealthy Finland, and I thought that happiness was about certain things: a good job, university, kids playing instruments. tick those boxes and you’ll be happy. but I’ve watched people get all these things and still be empty. being lucky enough to go to places like Kosovo, India and brazil and see people without all those things but still happy, I’ve realised it’s not true. hip hop is a marketing machine for the idea that consumption can make you happy.” a listen to above & beyond’s new album ‘Group therapy’ reinforces the point. the songs are melancholy, personal, heartfelt, with titles like ‘love is not enough’, ‘sweetest heart’, ‘sun & Moon’. “I like music that deals with real life: existential problems, indecision,” explains tony. above & beyond don’t do bling, don’t do cynicism. they don’t really do sex either, Mixmag points out. “We have instrumentals for that!” chuckles Paavo.

another striking thing about the album is the fact that, ‘Prelude’ aside, it’s not a collection of bangers. the group say this is a deliberate choice, that tunes too geared towards the dancefloor date fast. Instead, each tune is continually remixed and re-engineered for the shows. the tracks are written in logic (“I’ve been using it for 15 years so it’s kind of hard to change,” says jono Grant). jono and Paav do most of the production while tony tends to concentrate on the lyrics, but they all have input into everything they do. In fact, it’s the same across the entire a&b team, at times 15 strong. From seamus the tour manager, veteran of leftfield and the Prodigy, to managers soraya and james, neil and spencer the lighting and visual guys, the fans and friends selling the merchandise and the team working back home on the label and web, every one of them has been involved to some extent in the process of getting here.

On staGe, tony – platinum haired and wearing thick glasses and a shirt – is all bounce and action. the taller Paavo crouches a little, grinning uncontrollably.

every so often they will throw their arms in the air, mirroring the crowd which spends pretty much the entire set reaching up to the heavens. the stage is actually vibrating, like a speedboat hurtling across a choppy sea. jono, meanwhile, is back in the uK, hosting the radio show, running off a quick instrumental edit of ‘sun & Moon’ requested by ‘britain’s Got talent and getting ready to start on some club remixes. having worked flat out for nearly four months to finish the album, he contracted a virus on the new york leg of the tour. sorry not to be there, he says he feels much better after a couple of weeks rest – the longest time he’s had off for ten years.

the pace of the show is fast and relentless, with none of the introspection of the album. It’s all bass and heaviness, and grips the crowd from beginning to end. the encore is pandemonium. the last track, ‘Miracle’, plays out (pure trance: big rolling riffs and a melancholy vocal), as Paavo and tony sign t-shirts and pose for pictures in the pit between the stage and dancefloor, and confetti rains down. they shake hands and admire above & beyond tattoos; there are hugs and kisses, flashes from a galaxy of cameras, as they connect physically and emotionally with their fans. Which is, after all, what their success is built on. they’re having a rock star moment. they’ve earned it. Above & Beyond headline the Cream Arena at Creamfields on August 28. ‘Group Therapy’ is out now on Anjunabeats

“I thought happiness was about having certain things. It’s not true”