anamē Beautiful World Tour at Ora

anamē: Old Norse, meaning: to adapt

anamē: fresh Scandinavian duo, meaning: songwriters, DJs and electronic producers, with a shared musical worldview and social philosophy, forged via a 20year friendship and killer third-party collabs. And the occasional bender

anamē: new Anjunabeats priority, meaning: old Norse(ish) friends of Above & Beyond compose and curate brilliant debut artist album, Beautiful World: an essential selection, already, for 2023

Marcus Schössow and Thomas Sagstad have been planning, plotting and dreaming anamē for two decades.

First coming together at a house party in Helsingborg, Sweden, the Swede and the Norwegian bonded over a love of artists (Sasha or early Tiesto), labels (Strictly Rhythm, Defected), ethics (“We both wanted to work hard for our dreams”) and ideas.

As a laughing Schössow explains: “It was a quick bromance! For me and Thomas, loyalty and trust are ultimately the key foundations of a relationship. And we immediately felt that there was that brother feeling — certainly something I hadn’t had in my whole life before.”

Individually, each had success wearing multiple hats. Schössow made music as half of gardenstate; as a remixer for acts as diverse as Axwell Λ Ingrosso, Charli XCX and Zedd; and with releases on Axtone, Armada, Size, Spinnin’ and Anjunadeep. Sagstad released tracks with Steve Smith of Dirty Vegas, formed the label Agape Music (a partnership with

Strictly Rhythm), and earned support from fellow DJs Carl Cox, Sasha, John Digweed, Tiësto, Armin van Buuren and Swedish House Mafia.

As family life, academic studies, and new homes in different countries threatened to separate them, their old connection drew them back together.

“About two and a half years ago, we sat down, looked at the stars, and said: ‘Well, now’s the time. Things are perfectly aligned for us to finally do what we talked about doing 20 years ago,'” recalls Schössow. “So that’s how we came up with the name anamē. We’ve been adapting to whatever has come our way so far in life. And all of those experiences, all those life lessons, have become a map for the music we make together.”

“We just want to make music that makes people happy,” expands Sagstad. “It sounds so easy, but there’s so much craziness going on in the world.”

It wasn’t long before anamē graced us with an array of incredible tracks. Across 2021 and 2022 the duo crafted an emotive collaboration with Above & Beyond and Marty Longstaff on ‘Gratitude,’worked with BLR and Robbie Rise on club anthem ‘Influencer,’ and reworked the classics ‘Burma’ by Lostep and ‘Tears From The Moon’ by Conjure One and Sinéad O’Connor. Alongside A&B’s Paavo Siljamäki in his P.O.S. guise, the pair remixed ‘Lonely River’ by singer-songwriter Kyan, and hooked up on P.O.S. track ‘Good People.’ A seven-minute floor-burner and positive living mantra that combines Latin heat with Finnish cool, the latter appears on the upcoming debut album from P.O.S.

That range, that ambition, that heart, that sense of adventure: all are front and centre — and buried in the DNA — of Beautiful World. It’s the album that Schössow and Sagstad, individually and collectively, have worked their whole lives to create.

Over its 12 tracks (with 16, or more, to follow on the Deluxe edition), anamē present, literally and figuratively, their worldview.

Fulfilling their vision for the album also meant reaching out to others who fit with their sound. One of the first connections to be brought onto the new album was Bien. An indiepop trio from Nashville, fans know of their previous work with anamė from the 2021 viral hit

‘The Best Part’ which has over 50 million streams. Their latest collaboration, ‘Must Be Dreaming’ resulted in another uplifting cloudbuster to add to the LP.

“There’s something about how Bien writes songs and how they sing which perfectly aligns with how we write and produce,” says Sagstad. “It’s just a natural flow, a flow of energy, all the time. So it’s never hard to make a song with them. Once they send us something we can feed off, we can have it done in three hours. It’s so instant, so quick, so effortless.”

Even more instant was the inspiration that struck with ‘Anywhere,’ the first single to be released from Beautiful World. With rippling piano chords and a glorious vocal, it’s a curtain-raiser with a message-bearing hook that drills into the importance of true, bonedeep connectivity: “You can take me anywhere, just as long as you’re with me.”

“It glues together what we are about,” says Schössow. “Many of the songs on the album are with vocals, but that song has all the characteristics of our sound. The first time Thomas sent me that vocal, I was like, wow. It just hits in the heart. And it very heavily emphasises songwriting, which is key to us. We don’t just want to make club records. We want to make music that tells a story.”

Showcasing another colour in anamē’s kaleidoscopic exploration of what dance music can do is ‘Someone We Used to Love.’ A rave-ready earworm, it features Lydmor, a Danish singer-songwriter with her own pop-star career in Denmark. Schössow’s cousin sent him a Facebook video of Lydmor singing the song. While it had been released previously, anamē heard new possibilities.

“There was something so special about it,” the Swede says of the vocal and feel of the track.”The way she sings it, it’s like you’re in the story and we can feel her pain. It’s one of those records that we’ve had on the hard drive for almost two years, and we keep coming back to it and saying: that is a good one.

“And it has a little bit of a controversial bite to it,” continues Sagstad. “It’s very edgy, rough around the edges. We just knew we had to do more with her. So we also have another song with her on the album, Peaceful Avenues. She’s just one of those forces of nature that we knew worked with our sound.”

There’s a different kind of energy on ‘Gravity,’ a sublime folktronica anthem which anamē based on an original track by British singer-songwriter Richard Walters.

“We chose that track from Richard because it has this Americana vibe to it,” explains Schössow. “I really love country music, but sometimes it’s hard to put country music in dance music,” he adds wryly. “But this track, as soon as I heard the guitar and the whole synth ‘western whistle’ sound, I thought: finally! It also has this melancholic Scandinavian vibe, like the theme tune to The Bridge,” he notes of the cult “Scandi noir” TV series. In fact, direct inspiration wasn’t far away: he lives very close to the titular crossing, across the Øresund strait between Denmark and Sweden.

“And I always wanted to do something with a similar vibe to the theme song,” Schössow continues. “Then me and Thomas put [Richard’s song together with our production TRUE?]. And it just matched our sound. It’s perhaps the most singer-songwriter song there is on the album.”

For Sagstad, ‘Gravity’ is a cornerstone song on the album for another reason. “I love the lyrics of the hook. It goes into gravity and the meaning behind that, keeping ourselves grounded and focusing on the right thing.”

That was, too, the focus behind another collaboration. ‘Closer’ is a hook-up with Dutch indie band Vaarvel, long a favourite of Sagstad, under their new moniker Shobi.

“I wrote a demo on piano, just a loop,” says the Norwegian. “And I asked our label manager: can we get them to sing on something? And he sent it over to them, this easy, super-basic, simple chord thing. And they sent us back an evolved version of that with some vocals.”

“What is important for all the vocal songs we do is that the lyrics actually mean something to us,” chips in Schüssow. “We’ve had plenty of really, really great demos from other writers but the lyrics didn’t really touch us. For us, that’s the most important thing. We don’t try to find the most poppy vocal. We try to find the vocals that feel like something we can stand behind every day,” he says, and he means that literally, too: anamē are playing around the world for much of this spring and summer, with later plans also in the works to tour with a roster of vocalists for a full, live, Beautiful World album experience.

That 360-degree idea guided their consideration of all their partners on Beautiful World, and not just the guest vocalists. When it came to a label, there was only one home for anamē.

“It comes back to what Marcus mentioned about how we created the idea of what we wanted this to be about,” says Sagstad, “the philosophy behind the whole thing. This is supposed to be fun, right? It’s supposed to be positive. It’s supposed to be about community. It shouldn’t be about ego. All of these things we clearly laid out all these years ago when Marcus and I first talked.

“So a huge part of us doing this now is Anjunabeats. What they stand for as a record label. Who they are as human beings. Who Paavo and Jono and Tony are. Who they are to us, and how they let us be what we need this project to be.”

In fact, he points out, without the Anjuna family, anamē’s debut album might not have happened in the first place. “Because neither of us were ready to take his project anywhere else. We needed a label, and what it stood for, that lined up with what we wanted to do.”

That mutual faith, respect and energy is embodied in a fantastic track with a fantastic title.

Melodic techno instrumental ‘Bermondsey Bender’ is a nod of thanks to the Thameside South London neighbourhood where Anjunabeats have their offices and A&B have their studios. It is, in effect, ground zero for all the values and vibes that Thomas, Marcus, Jono, Paavo and Tony have in common.

“That song is about how we spent so much time down there — but it’s not actually about a drunken night!” clarifies Schössow with a smile. “It’s just about how that area of London has this energy. And you kinda leave with that energy, feeling completely drunk. Drunk on energy and good vibes.”

“Very accurately put,” agrees Sagstad. “When we’re there, we’re running between the office and the studios and the hotel. It’s this triangle of streets. And you’re so full of energy and adrenaline because you’re trying to make everything happen while you’re there. So I think that track is a good representation of us, and the album. It’s fun to play with the whole bender idea. It’s not really about that. But it still feels the same — in a positive way!”

From beautiful streets with beautiful energy to Beautiful World: this is the musical and emotional universe that Marcus Schössow and Thomas Sagstad have been working towards for two decades. A brand new adventure that’s 20 years young, it’s finally time for everyone to get involved.