Legendary Trance Trio “Above & Beyond” released their brand new studio album titled as “Common Ground” on Jan 25, 2018, its their 5th studio album apart from producing 2 Acoustic albums.
Album features several downtempo tracks and all are really tremendous and you of course know the magic of this trio, keeping very emotional close to heart kind of stuff but euphoric at the same time, the same can be seen in this album as well.
Album features 13 tracks and also the return of Justine Suissa, Richard Bedford and Zoe Johnston on vocal duties with some already released tracks like Tightrope & My Own Home just to name a few.
To celebrate the release, Jono from Above & Beyond came on A State of Trance studio on episode number 850 Part 1 for 60 minutes of magical mix and pure bliss, he also played a mini set in the regular 2 hour show broadcast and in between there was a small chat session which was really really amazing.
Armin – How are you, you must be excited?
Jono – Yeah pretty excited as our album is out this week.
Armin – You have been touring a lot, in US i saw a crazy tour schedule how’s it going and how many dates you got planned?
Jono – Well, we are just starting, so its not going and almost 30 🙂
Armin – First of all a very interesting track title, what does “Common Ground” mean?
Jono – You will get different answer from each of us but i think its about the fact that that we have in more in common that divides us, there is a lot of division in the world, so we wanted to kind a capture that and include in our album title.
Armin – What i have heard on the album so far, several down tempo tracks on there, was this the influence of your acoustic session ?
Jono – I don’t know really but we try to keep these 2 things separate, but yeah you are probably right.
Armin – The first single “Always” with “Zoe Johnston” is like a very band kind of feeling, is releasing music like this is a step forward of being like a band or you still consider yourselves electronic artist?
Jono – Still definitely electronic for me.
Armin – So you guys work with 3 people and i am working alone most of the times or sometime with Benno, does it make even harder to finish an album to find Common Ground in the studio (laughs), there’s ever been slamming door moment in the studio?
Jono – Yeah, it is absolutely right, it is challenging because every one has got a different view of where a track should go and that’s probably it takes so long to put a album out compared to you and not slamming doors but tons of arguments, 3 male egos all pulling in different directions, so normally i find that if someone has a clear idea of how the track should go that’s how it happens, occasionally there are those times when you just don’t know then that’s the great thing about working with other people isnt it where someone else goes, you know what we are really great here is to take this over there and you are like Oh God, thank God for that someone saved the situation (laughs) 🙂
Armin – How much of time it took for you guys to complete this album?
Jono – About 3 years that’s exaggerating because there is other stuff that we haven’t released on there and you know how it is when you are on tour, so probably a year realistically.
Armin – So how many tracks did you write for this, and how much end up on the album?
Jono – Probably 30, we got quite a bit to release still.
Armin – Who decided which of these should get on the album, 3 of you?
Jono – Yes, 3 of us and its pretty good this time, we managed to keep it a bit concise this time than the last one and yeah not too many arguments.
Armin – So where are you heading for the Common Ground world tour?
Jono – Starting with Philadelphia and then New York.
Album is released already and can be ordered / streamed from here.
Follow Me