A&B: Especially to do that feasibly, because most of the tracks that we're making are so layered, we would need so many players to properly do live. The other issue they have is to get a big vocal sound in any kind of space, like if you go and see Coldplay or Mariah Carey or anybody in a room, you're spending most of the day getting the sound right and sorting the problems with the PA. You don't have that luxury in a nightclub, it's not a special live PA that they'll put in for you, you're playing the club PA. So generally speaking, everything makes it very difficult to do anything good live in dance music unless you're really going to go the full hog and put a band together, but still with some samples playing. If you really want to do something that is not in a club night that requires a lot of time and effort in terms of getting the production together and getting the dates together and because we're so busy doing other things, that's one side of things that we've not had a chance to do. The nice thing about doing something unplugged is it's quite low-key, and the live element will be a hundred percent and hopefully the kind of unique nature of it will be one hundred percent. But in terms of production it's basically a bunch of us sitting around playing mainly acoustic instruments and just seeing the other people that we work with singing. So it's easily done but not when you're sandwiched in-between two DJ sets which is the reality of doing anything live at a club.
RS: Were you all DJs first or producers first?
A&B: Definitely producers first, and I think actually we were all
musicians first. I was in a band, Jono was in a band and, Paavo was
making music for theaters originally and then all of us, by various
different means got into producing electronic music. We started as
Above and Beyond doing remixes. We got together to do a remix for
Chakra at the first instance, so it's been kind of remixers,
producers, and DJs, in that order. Then came the label and we became
label heads as well, so we do quite a lot of different things.
RS: When the three of you create music, do each of you do a
different part or is it more collaborative process?
A&B: It will depend on where the initial idea for the track comes
from. Sometimes somebody can come up with an idea for a backing track
and that might suggest to somebody else a spark and then it becomes
collaborative very quickly. For example, a few years ago Jono and I
were jamming in the studio and I wrote this miserable song about my
girlfriend and I having just had a big bust up argument. We recorded
that vocal and it sort of sat around for a long, long time. Then one
day when I was away, the vocal got turned into a track that Jono and
Paavo remixed. To be honest, every imaginable way that you could
combine three people into making music, we do. We don't really have a
formula for doing it because ideas come when they come and you can't
suddenly come up with an idea on the spot. Its something that either
comes to you or it doesn't. The great thing about having three people
is there's always somebody who's feeling really enthusiastic at that
very minute to get on and doing it and somebody wants to got and get
something to eat or get on the internet or book some flights or do
some other things, the process keeps going. So it's generally
collaborative and I think, probably Jono or Paavo are much better on
the engineering side of things than I am, they're certainly better at
playing keyboards than I am because I'm a guitar player at heart and I
tend to do most of the lyric writing and melody writing - the vocal
side to things. But it's not exclusive, and that's kind of the way we
like it really.
RS: When you talk about vocals, when you're writing a track do
you have a vocalist or singer in mind?
A&B: When we do Ocean Lab stuff we've got a singer in mind because
Ocean Lab's a project that we always do with Justine Suissa. Sometimes
Justine will co-write the backing track and sometimes, like Satellite,
which is my favorite thing that I've written with Justine, it was a
case of sixty percent of the song was written and warbled on to a demo
by me. Then Justine came back with another bit, and then we wrote
another bit together and the thing sort of finally got finished. When
we do Above and Beyond, to be honest, I think most of the vocal demos
that I write have ended up having me on at the beginning. Then we
found this guy, Richard Bedford, who was a friend of one of the guys
that worked in our office and I'd been looking for somebody with that
kind of voice. It's a guy with a very sort of soulful white voice and
he sent in his CD and we played it, and literally within fifteen
seconds I was like yes, this is the guy. He ended up doing three of
the tracks on TriState, principally because he sings in a way that I'd
really like to sing. It's not a million miles away and he's not a
girl, so the songs which are written from a man's perspective still
have that kind of integrity. But to be honest, it does not always
matter, if a song's written by a man it can sound OK sung by women,
Satellite is an example of that. There's nothing really sort of fixed
in what we do, it's an entirely movable piece.
