Above & Beyond Has Always Been About Fostering Connection In Their Community
Above & Beyond are an electronic music group consisting of English musicians/DJs Jono Grant, Tony McGuinness and Finnish musician/DJ Paavo Siljamäki. Formed in 2000, they are the owners of London-based electronic dance music labels Anjunabeats, Anjunadeep and Anjunachill, and also host a weekly radio show titled Group Therapy Radio.
The trio has been consistently ranked among DJ Magazine’s Top 100 DJs Poll; coming at their highest position of No. 4 in 2008, with their most recent position of No. 53 in 2024.
Whether through their live shows or heartfelt music, Above & Beyond has always been about fostering connection in their community. But for Jono Grant, Tony McGuinness, and Paavo Siljamäki, their fifth artist album—their first since 2018’s Common Ground—was just as much about reconnecting with each other. “We all had time away doing solo projects, and being away during lockdown when, of course, we couldn’t get together and we couldn’t do shows,” McGuinness tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “Our world really changed over those years.” During that time, Siljamäki had moved out of the UK, which meant they had to rethink how they worked as a group.
To help shape the album, the trio brought in veteran producer Dave Dresden (of Gabriel & Dresden) as an external A&R. “The hardest thing is deciding what tracks go on the album,” McGuinness says. Dresden became a trusted filter, helping them whittle down dozens of demos into something cohesive. “Start a Fire” was one of those once-dormant ideas, born from a lyric McGuinness had stored in his notebook and paired with one of Siljamäki’s old demos. Anchored by longtime collaborator Richard Bedford’s soaring top line, it’s slow-burning and deceptively uplifting, revealing the ache of a love you can’t confess. “It starts in that dark, quiet place,” McGuinness explains. “But I think for writing for Above & Beyond, you’ve got to end up there… If you’re going from really small humble to that, you’ve gone a long way, and that’s how you get people to cry.”
Those lingering melodies and stirring lyrics run throughout Bigger Than All of Us, whose mini-meditations on love, loss, heartbreak, and hope—despite their universal themes—feel as if they were custom-made for a single person. “Our songs have always been very rooted in reality and life,” Siljamäki says. “They’re like little time capsules of what was going on in our lives at the time.”
Zoë Johnston, another familiar voice in A&B’s world, helped write the devastating “Quicksand (Don’t Go),” which confronts impending loss with grief and grace, while navigating the passing of her father. But glimmers of light break through on tracks like the driving pep talk “When You Believe” and the unwavering “Ride at Dawn.” The title track, written with Justine Suissa, is stripped down to ambient chords and ’80s drums, letting her lyrics shine as she reminds us how deeply connected we are without even knowing it: “You think your joy is nothing/How could laughter change the world?/How can just one act of kindness change the way a life unfurls?/Because it’s bigger than you/It’s bigger than me/It’s bigger than all of us.”
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