As far as dance music success stories go, Above & Beyond’s career is a standout. With a string of artist albums, an ever-growing Anjunabeats empire and tireless world tours, their superstar status has been hard-earned. In an interview with Mixmag this week, Jono Grant has drawn on the trio’s experience to send a sagely message to aspiring producers (and established ones, too). The bottom line being: don’t shamelessly ape the formula of David Guetta, Swedish House Mafia and co.

“I’ve noticed that many smaller producers are seemingly feeling a bit lost in where to go with their direction, and are perhaps seeing artists like having mainstream commercial success and saying, ‘I want a piece of that!’,” muses Grant in the interview. “They are then diverting from their chosen flight path and heading towards that, which is of course fine if it’s where they genuinely want to be, as some do. But for a lot of producers, they dilute what they are about because they are not David Guetta and don’t do what he does best. That’s not experimenting in my eyes, it’s panic!”

He then goes on to single out a particular example that’s likely to resonate with Beatport-trawling ITMers.

“For example, over the last two years I’ve noticed Beatport has been littered with tracks trying to directly mimic the riff from Swedish House Mafia’s One, including some of the bigger names,” Grant continues. “Now the instrumental of One was a great groundbreaking track when it came out, but it just feels very weak, perhaps even cynical, for so many producers to try and copy this, and in 95-percent of cases creating very weak imitations. In the process of doing something like this you dilute your own identity.

“Dance music has always been about borrowing ideas, but at the same time it’s also been about moving the sound forward. I’ve always felt the key is to draw influences from multiple sources in order to make something fresh sounding. Fair enough if you take influences from the SHM, but throw something new in there.”

This weekend is set to be a big one for Above & Beyond, with the 400th episode of its Trance Around The World radio show. Naturally, there’s a mammoth party planned – Beirut is the lucky destination – accompanied by an eight-hour broadcast. The headliners will be joined by Jaytech, Mat Zo, Kyau & Albert and Gareth Emery, so fans will want to settle in.