Above & Beyond

The British trio Above & Beyond emerged among trance’s most enduring successes from the 2000s into the 2020s, earning recognition for their studio productions and remixes alongside headline DJ sets and the operation of their own imprint. Jono Grant, Tony McGuinness, and Paavo Siljamäki assembled the act in London in 2000. Early attention arrived through a high-profile reworking of Madonna’s “What It Feels Like for a Girl,” after which the group advanced methodically as both studio artists and live performers, eventually filling major venues across the U.K. and the U.S. Mainstream visibility arrived with the 2015 release of their third studio album, We Are All We Need, followed in 2018 by the Top Three U.S. hit Common Ground. Additional ambient projects appeared under the Flow State banner, and the trio later composed the 2022 soundtrack The Last Glaciers.

Grant and Siljamäki first crossed paths at the University of Westminster and created the Anjunabeats label before recruiting McGuinness. Their initial collaboration as Above & Beyond produced a remix of Chakra’s “Home,” which opened the door to further assignments including 2001’s widely noticed treatment of Madonna’s “What It Feels Like for a Girl.” Other notable early reworkings encompassed Aurora’s “Ordinary World,” Fragma’s “Everytime You Need Me,” and Perpetuous Dreamer’s “The Sound of Goodbye.” The group launched its DJ career in 2002 and climbed steadily into the upper reaches of DJ Mag’s annual Top 100 poll.

Their first original production, the vocal-trance single “Far from in Love” featuring Kate Cameron, surfaced in 2002. Around the same period they issued the inaugural volume of the Anjunabeats mix series and introduced OceanLab, their most visible side project alongside aliases such as Tranquility Base, Dirt Devils, Free State, Rollerball, Tongue of God, and Zed-X. OceanLab debuted with “Clear Blue Water” in 2001 and continued issuing material through the decade, highlighted by the 2004 hit “Satellite.” The trio’s first full-length album, Tri-State, arrived in 2006. Further singles preceded the 2011 release of Group Therapy, after which they issued the acoustic re-recordings collection Acoustic.

We Are All We Need, their 2015 third studio LP, marked a commercial peak to that point. Built around songwriting contributions from Zoe Johnston and Alex Vargas, the record entered the U.K. chart at number 12, topped Billboard’s dance chart in the U.S., and reached the Top 40 of the Billboard 200. Acoustic II followed in 2016, presenting string-laden, stripped-back versions of material from the 2015 album and earlier catalog. The group maintained its weekly Group Therapy radio broadcast, reaching the 200th installment that year, while the 13th edition of the nearly annual Anjunabeats mix series appeared in 2017.

Common Ground, the fourth official album, surfaced in 2018 and climbed to number three on the Billboard 200, the highest placement achieved by a British electronic act in the chart’s history. Guest vocalists included Zoe Johnston, Richard Bedford, Justine Suissa, and Marty Longstaff. Early the next year the single “Distorted Truth” preceded the Common Ground Companion EP in March, while the meditative ambient set Flow State, intended to accompany yoga, arrived later in 2019. Volume 15 of the Anjunabeats series and Flow State Meditations both appeared in 2020, followed by the third Flow State installment, Healing with Nature, in 2021. The Last Glaciers, a soundtrack created with Darren Tate, was released in 2022.