ABBA in motion-capture equipment. Photo Credit: Baillie Walsh
ABBA fans are excited about the new album Voyage. Pre-orders in the UK alone topped 80,000, breaking a Universal Music UK pre-order record.
The album release is being accompanied by a special Voyage tour in London. Tickets went on sale for the ABBA Voyage digital event today. Digital versions of the singers (not holograms) will perform alongside a 10-piece live band at London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The shows start May 27, 2022, and ABBA fans rushed to book their tickets.
The digital ABBAtars of Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus will perform alongside the band. The group’s digital counterparts were created with the help of Industrial Light and Magic – the special effects company founded by George Lucas.
Work on the concert series involved months of motion capture with the group and a team of more than 850 people. More than 160 cameras were used to film the band’s performance. ILM used archive footage of the band to develop the realistic digital performance.
ABBA bandmates performed every single song in the show over five weeks so ILM could capture every mannerism.
Creative Director Ben Morris says his company has recreated ABBA in its prime, from 1979. “We are creating them as digital characters, then use performance capture techniques to animate them and make them look perfectly real,” Morris says.
Klaxons’ James Righton and Little Boots will both appear as part of the live band. The reunion will be the first in four decades with “I Still Have Faith in You” and “Don’t Shut Me Down” celebrating the announcement.
The new ABBA album Voyage will contain ten new tracks, with at least one Christmas song. Will the group dethrone Mariah Carey’s Christmas tradition of taking the top of the Christmas charts? I guess we’ll see later this year.
ABBA – Voyage Tracklist
- I Still Have Faith In You
- When You Danced With Me
- Little Things
- Don’t Shut Me Down
- Just A Notion
- I Can Be That Woman
- Keep An Eye On Dan
- Bumblebee
- No Doubt About It
- Ode To Freedom
ABBA is poised to reach a whole new generation of new fans, especially on TikTok. The group recently joined the short-form video site and the #ABBA hashtag has generated one billion views so far. That’s without the catalogue officially available for use on the platform, too.
