Several years on from their opening artist album Tri-State and the OceanLab offshoot in 2008, UK trance trio Above & Beyond return with Group Therapy another collection of emotional dancefloor anthems and a push into the farther reaches of the Above & Beyond sound. To discuss the record ahead of Above & Beyond’s arrival in Australia for the Group Therapy headline tour inthemix caught up with group mainstay Jono Grant during an English summer morning.

Hey Jono, how are you mate?

“Pretty good, thanks! We’ve got a full day today because as well as doing interviews we have to make a radio edit of one of our album tracks to promote the third single.”

Right, what’s that process like for you guys?

“Well it can be quite tricky sometimes, because you kind of have to convey the essence of a song that could be five or six minutes long into something that’s very short. Some songs it’s really easy to do that to but other ones can be a bit of a challenge.”

Is that a decision you guys made yourself or is it coming from other people in your camp that are deeming these changes necessary?

“Yeah, it involves a lot of other people; sometimes you’ll have a radio plugger come and tell you what they need to take it to radio – and that’s not in typically musical language, you know, sometimes that might just say ‘it doesn’t have enough _momentum_’ and you have to figure what they actually mean there. The guy we’re working with now is really really good though; it can be a kind of black art getting your song onto radio because a lot of it is all about contacts and relationships with the right DJs and this guy knows all the right people.”

It’s interesting that today, in the day and age of the internet, an act such as yourselves still need to do the little things like make an edit to please people on radio. Does that mean that the internet is not all powerful and that you still need to have a noticeable presence out there?

“Well I that that it is as powerful as people think it is. It’s really interesting to see how things work because we haven’t had a record on the Radio 1 playlist in about seven years I think and because of all the fans online and the radio show and tours we haven’t needed to be out there on mainstream radio. Now if that happens it’s just a bonus, while 10 years it might’ve been the death of your career. Maybe that’s a bit dramatic but it practically was the death of your career if you didn’t have that attention. That was the be all and end all and now you don’t need it so much because you can connect directly with your fans and build it up that way; it’s great. As long as you have the right product – without sounding too cold -, the right music then you’ll get there.

We haven’t pushed any of our music to radio very hard but our last two singles have been playlisted so it’s just the cherry on top of the cake, not to sound ungrateful. You kind of forget what that feels like!”