Can you name how many subgenres of EDM there are? Electronic Dance Music itself is a subgenre, or at least it used to be. Now it’s not only it’s own entity, but it has bass-y little genre babies. There’s Ambient, Breakbeat, Downtempo, Disco, Dub, Electronic Rock, straight up Electronica, and Trance – just to name a few.

Each subgenre has gone through peaks and valleys of popularity, but Trance is one that seems to stay relevant longer than others. That may have to do with the number of high-quality trance musicians there are on the scene – including Above and Beyond.

What is Trance Music?

If you had to take a test, it would be really hard to determine one subgenre from another, but here’s a hint. Trance music uses a BPM (beat per minute) of 125-150. These fast beats are laid over with other tracks and rhythms. Sometimes Trance artists make those layover tracks, but often they do what’s called “sampling” and use snippets of songs from other artists.

That’s exactly how the EDM trio from England got their start – making remixes and sampling tracks from other already-successful artists. As their skills and fanbase grew, they started creating more of their tracks from scratch. You can tell the difference between their early days and their present experience by listening to the remix “What It Feels Like for a Girl” and any song off the album Common Ground.

Common Ground

There’s a reason we talked about their last album, Common Ground, before mentioning any of their other ones. It’s the bands’ fourth album and their most successful, by far. That album hit number three on the Billboard chart. It gave the trio the confidence to go out of their comfort zone by creating “Flow State,” early last year.

Wondering what an Above & Beyond show is like? It’s a little of this, a little of that. You’ll hear things from their early days, things they made just for fun, and maybe even some sneak peaks from their upcoming album.