Above & Beyond have marked a quarter-century together with a retrospective One Mix for Apple Music, rebuilt specifically for immersive Spatial Audio. Released on 24 July 2026, the 15-track, 82-minute mix moves across the trio’s catalogue from early landmarks to material from Bigger Than All Of Us, turning what could have been a simple anniversary compilation into something closer to a studio excavation.
Above & Beyond look back without standing still
Anniversary projects can easily become tidy exercises in nostalgia. This one is more interesting because the format forces Jono Grant, Tony McGuinness and Paavo Siljamäki to re-enter their own sessions and reconsider how those records behave when the stereo field is no longer the final destination. Apple Music describes One Mix as its DJ-focused showcase for mixes presented in Spatial Audio, and the Above & Beyond edition leans into that premise rather than treating immersive sound as a cosmetic extra.
The trio have said that revisiting their old projects revealed details that were easy to miss in the original stereo versions. That observation gets to the most useful part of the exercise. Much of Above & Beyond’s music has always depended on careful layering: vocal harmonies tucked behind synth lines, long reverbs used as emotional glue, and percussion that often does more than simply keep time. Spatial mixing gives those elements somewhere else to go.
From Tri-State to Bigger Than All Of Us
The selection reaches back to the Tri-State era, including staples such as “Can’t Sleep” and “Good for Me”, before moving through the catalogue towards the group’s more recent work. Apple Music positions the mix as a career-spanning retrospective, and that description is accurate: rather than locking onto one club period, it traces how Above & Beyond’s writing moved between trance, vocal songwriting and increasingly broad production palettes over two and a half decades.
That timeline matters. Above & Beyond’s longevity is tied not only to a recognisable sound, but to the ecosystem that grew around Anjunabeats and the wider Group Therapy community. Plenty of dance acts survive by recycling the period that first made them successful. Above & Beyond have instead kept their catalogue in motion, whether through acoustic reinterpretations, extended mixes, deep sets or collaborations that push familiar melodic ideas into different settings.
Why Spatial Audio makes sense for this catalogue
There is an obvious technical appeal in hearing a trance record spread beyond a conventional left-right image, but the more interesting question is what the format does emotionally. Above & Beyond’s records are built around tension, release and scale. Pads bloom slowly, vocals sit close to the listener and then recede, and breakdowns often work by making the room feel temporarily larger before the kick returns. Spatial Audio gives mixers another dimension for shaping that movement.
That does not automatically make an immersive version better than the original. Club music was largely designed around stereo systems, and the physical force of a focused two-channel mix remains part of its identity. But for headphone listening, a retrospective like this offers a different route into material many fans already know by heart. The point is less replacement than perspective.
A 25-year anniversary that feels connected to the present
The timing also links the project to Above & Beyond’s current phase. Their fifth electronic studio album, Bigger Than All Of Us, arrived in July 2025, with extended mixes following in February 2026. The album was their first full-length electronic dance record in seven years, so the new One Mix arrives while the group are actively writing, touring and reshaping the catalogue rather than simply commemorating it from a distance.
There is also something fitting about hearing 25 years of Above & Beyond through a format built around depth and separation. Their music has always traded heavily in memory: melodies returning years later in live sets, vocal lines becoming shared rituals, old tracks taking on new lives through remixes. Spatial Audio gives that history another layer, literally and figuratively.
The One Mix with Above & Beyond is available now on Apple Music. For longtime listeners, it is a chance to hear familiar records with different internal architecture. For anyone arriving later, it works as a compact route through a catalogue that has spent 25 years finding ways to make big rooms feel unexpectedly personal.
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