This album will be talked about for years on end, trust me.
Today is a beautiful day for music, as a whole, not just Dance music. One of the Electronic spectrum’s greatest musicians, known collectively as Above & Beyond, have come together to release their new, gigantic long play, Bigger Than All Of Us. Rocking an impressive 16 tracks and vocal collaborations with their flagship artists, the release contains everything that makes the Above & Beyond sound so unique and hypnotic.
Someone once said Above & Beyond would never make music as magical as they did some odd 15 years ago. Allow me to differ, now that we have an entire album’s worth of proof that the magic that characterises the trio is still there, and quite intact. The flame hasn’t gone out at all. And the story behind the album shows the boys actively seek to continue with the project for many, many years to come.
An Album With Intention And Soul
Far from simply putting many tracks together and calling it an “album”, Above & Beyond are part of that somewhat slim percentage of artists who curate each track as part of a greater story, and weave them in such an order that said story is cohesive and complete. This time, the main message is a heartfelt “Thank you” from the band to its fans, who have contributed to building a community, well, far bigger than they themselves.
Let me elaborate: those who’ve been to an Above & Beyond show, or met people through the Internet with Anjuna in common, know just how supportive, attentive, and warm the community around all things A&B is. So much so, that the official name for their fans is Anjunafamily. And at this point in time, the Anjunafamily is not necessarily a group who treats the trio as their leaders or kings, and it’s instead become a net of company and support, be they involved or not.
That family, not the blood-related one, but rather the one you meet along the way. In my case, it all started in a foreign country, in a new city, while travelling alone, and stumbling upon a tall lad fishing on the shoreline of southern Mar del Plata, Argentina. How? We were wearing matching Above & Beyond tees. And today I’ve got uncountable friends, my personal Anjunafamily. And I bet everyone’s story is as bizarre yet so comforting as mine.
That’s what the album portrays: something so big it’s escaped what Above & Beyond or Anjunabeats/deep/chill was, is, or will ever be. It’s got a life of its own.
Bigger Than All Of Us: 16 Tracks Of Pure Bliss
Seven years after the release of Common Ground, their latest LP, the world was calling for a new work of art from the boys. And they surely delivered. Bigger Than All Of Us was first teased with the news that the band would skip 2024’s ABGT550 milestone celebration, with the promise to focus on production that would be off the charts. Then, last year, Tony McGuinness told us in our exclusive interview with him:
We’re going to be making an album that’s Above & Beyond soon.
And so, the game was on. And for their ABGT600 set, they premiered some tracks, and even the name of the album, without us ever knowing. Some of their most heartfelt creations were scattered around their two-hour set that night in Mexico City, the very songs that would become the most streamed parts of the entire set. They were up a notch when speaking about depth and musical prowess.
Now, imagine an entire album’s worth of these deep and resonant pieces. You’ve got Bigger Than All Of Us, something wonderful, quite on par with the band’s first albums, Tri-State, and Group Therapy.
Through 16 records spanning over 1.1 hours, Above & Beyond reunite with everything that makes their sound as iconic and their meaning as deep as they’re famous for. With songs composed alongside Zoë Johnston, Richard Bedford, and Justine Suissa, the trio expand the legacy these three iconic voices and minds have contributed to the project in its quarter-century-old life. At the same time, works with outstanding artists such as Malou, Victoria Horn, and Opposite the Other, showcase their relentless search for new angles to master. Finally, a very familiar face, Oliver Smith, can be seen collaborating with A&B for the first time. Their partnership as Anjunabeats goes way back, so their joint effort is just another way in which this album represents a thankful, heartfelt tribute to the roads walked to get to where they are right now.
Tri-State And Group Therapy Feels
From the fly-away intro track ‘Stepping In‘, you can just feel the influence of Above & Beyond’s early work. Which is a crazy thing to say, because how on Earth could they be borrowing inspiration from their own discography? Well, I had the feeling, still unfounded, that such was the case. Until a cheeky little interview came out on GRAMMY’s website today. Jono himself comments:
Taking a break is a good thing, but also looking back, I was very keen that this album would be a step towards the source of what made Tri-State rather than getting on the train and doing the next album without thinking about it. I can’t remember the last time I listened to one of our albums, but Tony and I sat down in the studio and listened to a lot of Tri-State and really got knee deep into what it is that’s making this album tick.
-Jono Grant.
I guess I wasn’t so wrong after all.
The album feels great, sounds great, and pays great homage. And I don’t mean “great” as in “I like it”, I mean it as, “this album is the embodiment of grandiosity”. It smartly looks back a decade and change, and brings back THOSE FEELS you get when listening to the earlier A&B, I swear it does. And it does so with an equally elegant design, a journey of sound that is able to recover the best leads, textures, patterns, and progressions from yesteryear and execute them in a modern, surgical manner.
From tested bangers such as ‘Quicksand‘ and ‘Start A Fire‘, to the nostalgia-filled ‘When You Believe‘, ‘Letting Go‘ and ‘Here Before‘, to the spiritual return of OceanLab in ‘Bigger Than All Of Us‘, to the clever tribute to past albums that is ‘Everywhere I Go‘, to the daring choice of cutting the album in half with a Drum & Bass track ‘Blood From A Stone‘. This album is truly a clever, very clever work of art. And I won’t ever be able to make my words step up to how every corner of it is part of thought process and hours of labour, no matter how hard I try.
Writer’s Picks
That’s a tough question. But I’ve got to marry two consecutive tracks that, for my album listens, I’ll continue to treat as just one: ‘Blood From A Stone‘ featuring Richard Bedford, and ‘Into The Light‘. The choice of Drum & Bass felt somewhat out of place for me at first, but that feeling vanished seconds into my first blind listen. The sheer WARMTH of the track, the chords (which remind me of ‘Choir To The Wild’ by Solomon Grey), Beaky’s on-point vocals, it’s just an amazing track, it’s got power, it’s got feeling, it’s got the Above & Beyond I’ve been listening to for years without having ever been in these BPMs, for God’s sake. It’s Above & Beyond, it’s pure, sincere, nude Above & Beyond. And it only gets better with ‘Into The Light’, elevating you up far beyond the blue sky. If there’s a moment where I broke down in tears, it was right here. The best 7.5 minutes of the album, in my honest opinion.
But I can’t just pick one section and call it a day. The album is full of gems. Among my favourites is ‘When You Believe‘, a gorgeous Progressive Trance track that feels like it’s 2012 all over again, and composed alongside the equally gorgeous Victoria Horn. You may not know her by name, but you’ll recognise the lyrics “I’ve been counting down the days and the nights…“. She wrote that. And for the first time ever, she’s singing her own words in an Above & Beyond production. The two tracks that have made me lose my voice when screaming behind the wheel are ‘Blood From A Stone’ and ‘When You Believe’. Guilty pleasures, much like munching on more chocolate than you should during Easter. I feel pleasantly spoiled.
Shout out to the creative nature of ‘Everywhere I Go‘, which I suspect is built from four different segments from the previous four A&B albums poured into one single track (I’ll ask the boys one of these days), and to the fire lyrical calibre of ‘Bigger Than All Of Us‘. What an incredible way of putting words together. “But it’s a ripple in the fabric we are all connected by“?!. Seriously?! Fire. Fire.
And I could continue describing the tracks one by one, so let’s move on.
Above & Beyond — Bigger Than All Of Us Tracklist
- Stepping In
- Start A Fire featuring Richard Bedford
- Carry Me Home with Zoë Johnston
- Everywhere I Go
- When You Believe with Victoria Horn
- Quicksand (Don’t Go) with Zoë Johnston
- Bigger Than All Of Us with Justine Suissa
- Blood From A Stone featuring Richard Bedford
- Into The Light
- Letting Go with Malou
- Here Before with Oliver Smith and Opposite the Other
- Sailing Off The End Of The World featuring Richard Bedford
- Ride At Dawn with Zoë Johnston
- Heartland with Justine Suissa
- ‘Til I’m Home featuring Richard Bedford
- Lullaby with Zoë Johnston
(Optional Read) My personal experience upon first listen, as an avid Above & Beyond fan
A Wingless Flight; Pure Auditory Stimuli
When I listened to the album for the first time, I lay in bed with my best pair of headphones on, eyes closed, blindfolded, quite literally. I let myself sink into the music for the entire duration of the journey, from start to finish. And what a journey, truly, wholeheartedly I say so. It’s one of the most beautiful things that I’ve done this year so far. The album is complex, it’s pretty, it tells you a story. It also makes you, in a way, the star of that story, and doesn’t let you go.
Do you know that thing that sometimes happens when you rub your eyes a bit too roughly and you start seeing patterns, hallucinations? That happened to me this time without the need to do anything. It was just auditory stimuli. This album made me feel things that I had never felt before. Or if I had felt them, it was in such a way that does not compare to this particular experience.
Final Words
A&B’s Best In A Decade
And it’s not to look down on previous albums, but the numbers that We Are All We Need did, or the extensive campaign carried out for Common Ground, while fantastic jobs, simply cannot equate to the feelings you get when listening to Bigger Than All Of Us. Objective analysis and solid evidence cannot be compared to the feeling of tearing up from a lone melody, or the goosebumps spreading across your forearms and down your spine when the vocal delivery hits just right.
The way each song is thought out, performed, and even positioned in the album, it all means something. It all has a purpose. The retro synths used in ‘Here Before’, the painfully honest delivery in ‘Lullaby’, the absolute power with which Beaky sings ‘Blood From A Stone’, the OceanLab-esque nature of the title track, the rollercoaster of emotions you go through with the album version of ‘Quicksand’, the 2009-Kaskade-ish character of ‘Letting Go’… man, I could go on for hours.
But at the end of the day, every experience is personal. Huge part of the success and greatness of the story of Above & Beyond is that their melodies, their lyrics, their shows, they all translate into something slightly different for each listener. Every Anjuna fan has a story unique to their life, virtually impossible to replicate by another Anjuna fan, of how and why they arrived here. My story began in 2015, in my former home, and then became something bigger than me five years later, in Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata, Argentina. And I love my story, and I hug it very tightly, and I thank the trio for having changed my life in such a way. For all I know, if it hadn’t been for them and their music, I wouldn’t be here writing this review today.
And I know you have your own story regarding Above & Beyond and Anjuna. And if you don’t, give this album a listen, eyes closed, headphones on, darkness. No distractions at all. And I bet it will be the beginning of something very beautiful. Even, something bigger than you, perhaps.
Listen to Above & Beyond’s masterclass of an album, Bigger Than All Of Us, by hitting the ‘Play‘ button on the Spotify player below. Also, click here to support the release on your platform of choice. Be sure to follow our page to stay up to date on the latest news and views regarding our beloved Dance music industry.
*Cover image credit: Amelia Troubridge