Above & Beyond Acoustic

[joshua0]

... and I still lose myself, in that orange-glowing moment ...

I'll be quick, since I should well be off to bed, but I wanted to capture some thoughts about Above & Beyond's acoustic show. A lot of the time, before an event like this, I end up building my expectations to be unrealistically high; indeed, this time, they were. The true magic was that the show was unrealistically good. I expected the group to be good musicians (I know them to be good DJs); they were phenomenally excellent musicians.

Above & Beyond are a DJ and electronic music producer group of three guys from the UK (Tony McGuinness; Jono Grant; Paavo Siljamäki. They have a storied history of producing really good stuff -- their first artist album, Tri-State was a fantastic piece of work; their side project with Justine Suissa, OceanLab, produced Sirens of the Sea, which is also fantastic; and most recently, they released their new album Group Therapy around a year and change ago. Most of what they do is in the general trance family of electronica, but they seem to pride themselves on taking a real emotional connection with their listeners, especially in their live gigs.

So, I've been to a DJ set of theirs, and it was of course great; the question was, how would they do an acoustic gig? The answer was "with a 15-piece band, and by doing jazz translations of their classics". In short, the two genres that I spend a lot of time around enjoying, fused together. It was an incredible night under the stars (or, at least, under the LA smog).

Some of the classic tunes that you'd expect, they performed. Although Justine wasn't there, they did a few OceanLab numbers (of course they played On a Good Day; they did Miracle, and also an incredibly cool version of Satellite); Zoë Johnston was there for her numbers, as well. They had interesting takes on some others; for instance, Black Room Boy (off Group Therapy), instead of doing as its original deep-club four-to-the-floor groove, they did in a swung 6, which had me giggling like a schoolgirl. (If you can find a video of it, and you know the original, it is such an incredibly cool take on it.) Richard Bedford (their usual male vocalist) wasn't there, but a new guy that I don't know the name of was, and amazingly, Tony McGuinness also took the mic (and *man* does he have pipes!).

They played some new material, too. When they first announced that they were doing an acoustic gig in London, and then another one here, I was hoping that the acoustic gigs would influence their musical direction going forward; if what they played last night was anything to go by, I won't be disappointed, it seems. One new number that they did was Blue Sky Action (when it finishes uploading, you'll find my shakeycam video on YouTube); I'm excited to see how that translates to an electronic form, but I really am impressed with it as it is. (The track seems like it was many months in the works, given that Jono was opaquely teasing it in January.)

But, more than anything else, they debuted a new song, Making Plans, which is just heart-rending. It sure looked like Tony was fighting off tears at the mic. (Back in the audience, I sure didn't manage to.) I don't know of many artists that can so incredibly effectively connect with their audience, but Above & Beyond sure can.

Overall, it was just an incredibly good show. They only are doing it for two nights in the US (tonight was the second), but they're going to release an acoustic studio album, and a DVD from the shows; you can bet that as soon as they pop up, I'll have them preordered.

The pictures are not great -- a lot of the angles were pretty tough -- but I hope they can at least begin to convey the experience of being there.

Comments

[hvincent.livejournal.com]

the backlit crowd ones are super hair-raising, in ways i can't really explain.

man, that sounds like a great show.