Above and Beyond, the trio of Jonathan Grant, Tony McGuinness, and Paavo Siljamäki, do everything you can imagine in the electronic music world – produce, write, remix, DJ, and run a music label. With their artist album TriState and AnjunaBeats label compilations as well as relentless touring, they have built a huge fan following resulting in achieving both Radio One Essential Mix of the Year and top 10 on the infamous DJ list. We chatted with Tony about everything from writing and producing to the horrors of wafty birds and VST trance.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: Where did the name Above and Beyond come from?
Tony McGuinness (Above & Beyond): The three of us got together to do a remix for Chakra's
"Home," and when we finished the remix and were just about to send it
off to Warner's, where I was working at the time, we thought 'damn,
we've got to come up with a name for the mix.' I looked around Jono's
studio and there was this piece of paper printed out from the internet
stuck to the wall above his bed. He had put 'Jonathan Grant' into
AltaVista which was the equivalent of Google in those days and he
found this website of this motivational guru trainer, and 'above and
beyond' was his slogan. So I was sitting there, looking over the
room, and I see 'above and beyond' and I just thought, 'that's
perfect,' so it was called the Above and Beyond mix. I don't know
that we thought of ourselves being above and beyond at that point, it
was that the mix was called Above and Beyond, but then we started
getting more work, and consequently it became our name. I think it
sort of sounds a bit like we want to sound, it's kind of onomatopoeiac
in that way.
RS: What's with all the different names you all use like
Oceanlab, Rollerball, and Tranquility Base?
A&B: To be honest, every time anybody comes up with a pseudonym
it's purely because they're not sure that what they've just done fits
in with the main name. That's where Oceanlab came from, we invented a
new project because we knew that we wanted to work with Justine
Suissa, but we didn't know if Above and Beyond would work with
Justine. We went with Oceanlab and that's done fantastically well,
and in some ways it's more popular on the record front than Above and
Beyond even.
Then we did a remix for another guy that he rejected but we thought
was fantastic, so we wanted to put it out, but it had so many knowing
references to other records, it was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek thing,
so we invented the name Tranquility Base to put it out and it did
quite well. We did some more stuff as Tranquility Base, but most of
the other pseudonyms were around before Above and Beyond, Free State
was Jono and Paavo and the Dirt Devils was Jono and Paavo before they
started with me, and Nitro Methane was a thing I did with my brother
before I started working with Jono and Paavo. So they're just names
that have sort of come along along the way, but ninety percent of what
we're doing now is Above and Beyond, with Ocean Lab coming up fast on
the outside.
RS: Now this is where Anjuna Beats switches to your record label, right?
A&B: Yes, that's right, Everything's part of one kind of extended
complex organism really, and Anjuna Beats and Above and Beyond just
turn into each other. It was principally the business side of things
that we were worrying about today, but obviously all of it has
implications for the other part. That's the thing about a small label
like us where we're reliant on so many different sorts of income
streams to make the whole thing viable. Any one of them on their own
wouldn't give us a viable business model, so we need to keep on top of
everything, really.
RS: So income streams, you've got your DJing, performing,
producing, remixing, digital sales...
A&B: Yes and we've got typical artists that we sign and a
publishing company. We've got our own label, a web shop that sells
merchandise, t-shirts and earplugs and other things, slip mats and CD
wallets and what have you. Obviously we produce Above and Beyond, we
remix Above and Beyond, and we DJ. We're pretty much everything that
a group can be involved in. It's really the way it needs to be,
because the old model of making the money from selling records doesn't
really work anymore because it's all changed. It's going to change
increasingly in the future by having a sort of a bit of faces in every
direction, this is the best chance of keeping going and becoming more
successful.
RS: Are you all touring a lot right now?
A&B: We're continually touring to be honest, the difference
between DJs and a band is there's not that much in terms of production
costs, so we're kind of ready to go at a moment's notice. We don't
really need to schedule three months solidly on the road and then two
months off. We're able to work during the week in the studio and
head-off at the weekend. Then if it's really far away, like we're
doing a South American tour for a couple of weeks or an Australian
tour for a couple of weeks, then we're away continually but most of
the time we're gigging at the weekend and working during the week.
RS: As you're touring, is that just DJing or are you performing
with a band?
A&B: No, we're just DJing at the moment. We've done live stuff in the past in the UK, as Oceanlab and we did an Above and Beyond gig in the UK with vocalists and live keyboards and live guitar. But to be honest, it's so much work for us to get stuff like that together and in terms of what we feel we need to represent Above and Beyond at this point in time, we just haven't really had time to do it. We were thinking about doing some kind of unplugged gig to launch the Ocean Lab album when that eventually gets finished and I'm looking forward to doing that because that takes the live group element of Above and
Beyond and puts it in a space where that can really make a difference.
The problem for you doing any kind of live thing in a club where
people are out to have a good night dancing and if you put any kind of
production in to the middle of that which is anything less than the
sort of produced sound that they're used to hearing, then it doesn't
really work.