Above & Beyond Celebrates 20 Years Of Anjunabeats

Above & Beyond’s world-renowned label Anjunabeats is celebrating its 20 year anniversary today with the release of Anjunabeats Volume 15. The 34-track mix boasts exclusive and unheard selections from Above & Beyond and family members of the imprint, such as Jordin Post, Le Youth, Andrew Bayer, Gabriel & Dresden, Oliver Smith, Mat Zo, Tinlicker and more.

The mix features two CDs, with disc one containing a deeper, progressive mix that showcases talent by Above & Beyond’s deep house label, Anjunadeep. The second disc highlights the trance sound that Anjunabeats is known for and features six Above & Beyond contributions, including three new club instrumentals. 

“I think the thing that’s really great fun about this one is that through a combination of I think Anjunadeep getting bigger and Anjunabeats signing more artists that are doing stuff that is slightly slower than the banging trance, we sort of got all parts of this journey oversubscribed now, which is great,” says Tony McGuinness, who is one third of Above & Beyond. 

McGuinness adds that he takes turns with Jono Grant and Paavo Siljamäki, the other two members of the English trance group, when it comes to curating the label’s mixes and compilations. McGuinness was in charge of creating Anjunabeats Volume 15, noting that this is the first time he has had to do it remotely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic—he even had to purchase a new laptop for the task because his last one didn’t have a big enough hard drive. He says he initially had around 50 tracks that ranged from “slow, 120 beats per minute, light [and] delicate things to 130 [beats per minute songs] to banging trance.” He narrowed the track list down to showcase the best of Anjunabeats from this time, and he arranged the songs intentionally to sound like one mix that starts small and gets bigger when the two CDs are played together. McGuinness adds that Anjunabeats Volume 15 is one of his favorite compilations that the label has released in some time. 

Anjunabeats was created in 2000 and actually predates Above & Beyond as it was initially founded as a university project. It then became a way for the group to release music that they didn’t sign, which didn’t allow for much of a short-term income but they knew it would pay off long-term. 

“Thank god we started the label when we did because now we’ve got hundreds of releases, lots of artists and lots of catalog,” he adds. “And I think a label of this shape actually is perfectly suited to make money from streaming, which is you get a tiny amount of money for every stream, but if you got a lot of releases it all kind of adds up to something reasonable. We didn’t see that coming. I don’t think we designed the label for streaming back in those days.”  

Being able to adapt to changes in the industry, such as streaming, is part of what McGuinness says has allowed the label to continue to be successful. He adds that their focus on quality control has also been key to their 20 year success. 

“I think we’re very picky people, so we would release stuff that was effing great,” he says. “That was the thing. In our world, not radio hits, but records that people would remember 20 years later. It’s turned out to be true. I think a lot of those records that we released in the first five years in remix form are still with us in one way, shape or form, and I think that’s sort of been true with our entire catalog.” 

Though they are unable to celebrate the milestone anniversary with live shows, McGuinness says the label’s current and past roster is working to create a mini compilation with each artist adding their favorite Anjunabeats track. The imprint will also drop an online club mix compilation and rerelease classic Above & Beyond and Anjunabeats merchandise. 

“I would like to think it’s always been about producing music that affects people emotionally, and the more we do that the happier we are, I think,” McGuinness adds.“I think the best music has an impression, it has an effect emotionally and that’s always been the music that we love the most.”