Members: Justine Suissa (vocalist), Jono Grant, Tony McGuinness & Paavo Siljamäki (Above & Beyond)
Formed: 2000, London, England
Genres: Vocal Trance, Uplifting Trance, Progressive Trance
Label: Anjunabeats
Years Active: 2000–2014 (hiatus); 2015–present (occasional)
The Voice and the Vision
There is a particular quality that separates a great vocal trance record from a merely good one. It is not just the melody, though melody matters enormously. It is not just the voice, though the right voice is irreplaceable. It is the sense that the lyrics, the music, and the performance are all reaching for the same thing at exactly the same moment — and that moment, when it arrives, makes the rest of the room disappear.
OceanLab built their entire catalogue on that principle. Over a career spanning more than two decades, the collaboration between vocalist Justine Suissa and the three members of Above & Beyond produced a body of work that stands apart from almost everything else the trance genre has ever offered — records of genuine emotional weight, chart success, and enduring cultural resonance that continue to define what vocal trance is capable of at its most ambitious.
The People Behind the Project
Jono Grant and Paavo Siljamäki met as students at the University of Westminster in London and founded Anjunabeats in 1999. Tony McGuinness joined the pair and Above & Beyond was formed — a production and DJ trio that would go on to become one of the most important acts in electronic music. Before they had released a single record under their own name, however, they had already begun working on what would become OceanLab.
Justine Suissa was a singer-songwriter from Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands who had found her way into the electronic music world through the UK trance scene of the late 1990s. Her first significant trance exposure came when her vocals appeared on Chicane’s album Behind The Sun in 2000, on the track “Autumn Tactics” — an early signal that her voice carried something unusually well-suited to the scale and emotion that trance demanded. Tony McGuinness encountered her and recognised what she could bring to the music they were making. Suissa was introduced to the full trio, and the partnership that became OceanLab was born.
The Early Singles: Building a Reputation (2001–2003)
OceanLab\’s debut single “Clear Blue Water” arrived in 2001, marking the first time the four had released music together. The track was remixed by several prominent names, with Ferry Corsten’s version proving the most widely heard. It reached number 48 in the UK Singles Chart in April 2002 — a solid chart entry for a debut from a then-unknown vocal trance act.
The second single “Sky Falls Down” followed in 2002. Armin van Buuren remixed it, and that version found its way onto A State of Trance, giving the project a direct line to the largest weekly trance audience in the world. The combination of Suissa\’s arresting voice and Armin’s remix sensibility was immediately apparent.
“Beautiful Together” came in 2003, remixed by Seraque, Silvester, and Signum — the latter delivering a version that became genuinely iconic in its own right. MixMag and other UK dance media were paying close attention, and the cumulative momentum of three strong singles was beginning to make OceanLab\’s name a familiar and respected presence within the trance community.
Satellite: The Anthem That Defined a Generation (2004)
If there is one OceanLab record that transcends the catalogue and lives in a different category entirely, it is “Satellite.” Released in 2004, the track was playlisted by BBC Radio 1 and reached number 19 in the UK Singles Chart — the project\’s highest-charting single and one of the most successful trance records to reach the mainstream UK charts in that era.”Satellite” is, simply put, one of the finest vocal trance records ever made. Suissa\’s vocal performance — yearning, intimate, and vast all at once — rides a production that builds with architectural precision toward a breakdown that has reduced countless rooms of people to something close to awe. The lyric — that opening line about being half a world away — became embedded in the trance memory of an entire generation. It is the kind of record that people can describe exactly where they were when they first heard it.
It reached the UK Top 10 as a dance single and became one of the two biggest chart hits in OceanLab\’s discography, alongside “Clear Blue Water.”
The Long Road to an Album (2005–2008)
Above & Beyond\’s increasingly demanding DJ schedule kept them out of the studio for extended periods through the mid-2000s, and OceanLab releases became less frequent as the trio balanced touring commitments with production work across multiple projects. The wait for new material was a source of real frustration among trance fans who had followed the early singles closely.
During this period, individual tracks surfaced: “Breaking Ties” debuted on Trance Around the World episode 178 in August 2007, offering the first glimpse of what a full-length OceanLab record might sound like. The response was immediate and enthusiastic.
The album was announced in June 2008 on the Anjunabeats website, with a release date of July 21, 2008. The single \”Miracle\” arrived a week earlier on July 14, containing Above & Beyond\’s Club Mix alongside remixes from Martin Roth, Michael Cassette, and Fletch.
Sirens of the Sea: The Album (2008)
Sirens of the Sea was not just OceanLab\’s debut album. In many respects, it was the moment that Above & Beyond\’s artistic ambitions fully crystallised on record for the first time — a landmark for both the OceanLab project and for Anjunabeats as a label.
The album is a deeply coherent body of work. Every track is anchored by Suissa\’s voice — melodic, soulful, and specific in its emotional register in a way that few trance vocalists have ever managed. The production moves fluidly across uplifting trance, progressive trance, and melodic structures that resist easy categorisation without ever losing the thread of what makes a trance record work in a room full of people.
Key album tracks — “Sirens of the Sea,” “Miracle,” “On A Good Day,” “If I Could Fly,” “Come Home,” “Lonely Girl,” “Breaking Ties,” “On The Beach,” “I Am What I Am,” “Secret,” “Just Listen,” “Ashes” — formed a complete and fully realised artistic statement. The album topped the iTunes dance chart and entered the UK albums chart at number 25.
It was, and remains, one of the most artistically satisfying albums in the history of vocal trance.
Sirens of the Sea Remixed (2009)
The follow-up Sirens of the Sea Remixed arrived in June 2009, assembling 20 club mixes of tracks from the original album alongside several OceanLab classics including “Satellite,” “Sky Falls Down,” “Clear Blue Water,” and “Beautiful Together.” The remix artists included Armin van Buuren, Ferry Corsten, Gareth Emery, Lange, Andy Duguid, Jaytech, Michael Cassette, Oliver Smith, and Andrew Bayer — a roll call that illustrated exactly how highly regarded OceanLab were within the trance and progressive house world.
The remixed album also entered the UK dance charts at number 25, confirming that the appetite for OceanLab material extended well beyond the core trance fanbase.
Hiatus, Legacy, and Return (2010–2016)
In January 2014, Tony McGuinness and Paavo Siljamäki confirmed via Reddit that the OceanLab name would no longer be used on new productions, with Suissa’s future collaborations with the trio credited directly to Above & Beyond. It felt like a quiet ending to something that deserved a more ceremonial conclusion.
But the story wasn’t finished. At Above & Beyond\’s landmark ABGT150 concert in Sydney, Australia in September 2015, the group surprised the audience with a new OceanLab production — “Another Chance” — premiering it live to an arena that understood exactly what they were hearing. The single was officially released in November 2016, landing as a warm and joyful reunion that demonstrated the chemistry between Suissa and the trio had lost none of its power.
Meanwhile, OceanLab\’s music continued to live within Above & Beyond\’s work in other forms. The 2014 Acoustic album and subsequent live tour saw the trio adapt their electronic catalogue with a 15-piece live band, and several OceanLab tracks — “Miracle,” “Satellite,” “Sirens of the Sea,” “On A Good Day” — received acoustic reworkings that opened the music to entirely new audiences and revealed just how strong the underlying songwriting had always been.
OceanLab: The Anthology (2024)
Fifteen years after the release of Sirens of the Sea, Above & Beyond and Justine Suissa released OceanLab: The Anthology on Anjunabeats in March 2024. The digital compilation spanned the full arc of the project — early vocal trance classics, the complete Sirens of the Sea run, new remixes from Seven Lions, Marsh, Genix, and Above & Beyond themselves, never-before-heard acoustic reworks of “Miracle,” “Satellite,” “Sirens of the Sea,” and “On A Good Day,” and Above & Beyond’s own 2023 progressive remix of “Satellite,” first played at ABGT500 in Los Angeles in 2022.
The limited edition vinyl box set that accompanied the digital release was an object of extraordinary care — four 12″ singles on crystal clear vinyl, a 10\” Another Chance single, a special repress of the Sirens of the Sea album, a 28-page perfect-bound book of archival photographs and notes from all four members, sheet music for “Miracle” and “On A Good Day,” and individually numbered cards from Justine, Tony, Paavo, and Jono to each purchaser. It was a tribute constructed with the same attention that had gone into the music itself.
What OceanLab Means
There is a reason that OceanLab has been cited by producers and DJs across the spectrum as the moment they fell in love with trance — James Hogg is one of countless examples, and he is far from alone. The combination of Suissa\’s voice with the production instincts of Above & Beyond created something that transcended genre classification without abandoning the structural language of trance.
Their best records work because they are genuinely about something. “Satellite” is about longing across distance. “On A Good Day” is about the fragility and grace of ordinary joy. “Miracle” is about exactly what its title suggests, approached without irony or excess. These are songs as much as they are dance records — and the fact that they function brilliantly as both is a rare achievement that most projects working in either world never manage once, let alone across an entire catalogue.
OceanLab is one of the defining acts in the history of vocal trance, and arguably the most complete artistic statement the genre has ever produced.