BEYOND A.C.

A long, long time ago somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle in the Finnish Lapland, a rock and roll band was formed. A group of young musicians gathered in a messy rehearsal place with a shared purpose: to write some songs, play some shows and have a good time. They called themselves Beyond AC, for… yeah, geographical reasons. 

In the space of few months in 1990–1991, they wrote an album’s worth of new material, fusing together their varying influences from all the best bands in the 70s and 80s. Rock’n’roll, hard rock, pop rock, blues rock, punk rock, indie rock – whatever rock, but rock it was. The plan was to record an album, but unfortunately, they didn’t make it that far: after a few chaotic gigs in the local scene the band imploded.

More than three decades later, the guys in the band decided it was time for a second round – after all, the songs were still there and deserved to be heard. Thus, after a lot of demoing and line-up tweaking, the album was done.

“We wrote some of these songs a long time ago and played them live a bit, but never got around to recording them”, the band reminisces. “It was time to give them a new life. And to write new ones as well. It’s cool that no matter when the songs were written, they really work well together. That’s because we know what we’re doing and what we want to sound like. We always have.”

Beyond AC are Kristian Herkman (vocals, keyboards, saxophone), Jake Tani (bass) and Ari Väntänen (guitar). Guest musicians on the album are the band’s original lead guitarist Janne Särkelä, Santiago Ortola (drums), Christopher Forsman (piano) and Phillipa Cookman (vocals).