Above & Beyond May Be Going Live… But Then Simplified

Written by the B&B Crew Wednesday, 30 June 2010 15:00

Above & Beyond were among the first in the trance genre to perform their music in the form of a live-act when they played in Beirut a while ago in front of 7000 people. The outfit have recently indicated that they might want to more of those, although there will be some limitations according to A&B themselves.

Tony McGuinnes indicated in an interview "I felt that we gave a good account for ourselves but probably it's a thing you need to do for about a year every couple weeks or every week or twice a week before you get really good at it and attempt to say that you're doing that well. It's a whole other game, and that's what we learned – but it was fantastic. And to do it in Beirut in front of 7000 very welcoming people was fantastic."

He indicated that the main problem with performing their sounds live is that it's too difficult to switch between the myriad of sounds and textures they use in their different songs. Which lead to McGuinnes saying ""We need to make a smaller, more simplified version (..)".

"(..) our aim was to try and reproduce the records live, 'cos that's kind of what you do if you're in a band...which I think is next to impossible to do because of that issue! You know, imagine it's a gig and between each song there's 64 people running off and another 64 people coming on, and no soundcheck, off you go. That's really effectively what you do, especially with the detail that we did it. We had everything separate and we were all playing different parts and getting it all to gel together was the thing that was a lot harder to do. We didn't really spend that much time thinking about that to be honest - it was sort of "oh no it'll be fine", but actually that's what you're doing."

Dear Tony, you may have got a different understanding of 'live playing' than the rest of the world. It's not just a matter of hooking up some cables, insert some parts and rock away, especially not when your active in the field of poppy trance, such as you. Trying to reproduce your own material on stage is where the band part comes in. Traditional bands manage to do so by combining traditional instruments to nifty programming and, most important, band/audience synergy. We don't want to rain on your parade, but performing live is all about solid preparation, roadtesting, even rewriting parts and bits of your songs. What would be the use of a live performance if you stuck to the original structures? What do you think those dozens of techno live-acts are doing when they perform?

Just think about it. See what you can come up with. A&B tracks are similar to pop/band song structures, so we're sure you'll figure something out.
Meanwhile, the best of luck and keep your chin up!

Love,
- The Beatsandbeyond Crew.

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