ABBA is releasing its first new music in four decades, along with a concert performance that will see the Dancing Queen quartet going entirely digital.The forthcoming album Voyage,’ to be released Novembrr 5, is a follow-up to 1981’s The Visitors, which until now had been the swan song of the Swedish supergroup. And a virtual version of the band will begin a series of concerts in London on May 27. ‘We took a break in the spring of 1982 and now we’ve decided it’s time to end it,’ ABBA said in a statement.
They say it’s foolhardy to wait more than 40 years between albums, so we’ve recorded a follow-up to ‘The Visitors.’
The group has been creating the live show with George Lucas’ special-effects company, Industrial Light & Magic.
They say the virtual versions of themselves are weird and wonderful, and go beyond holograms.
It was suggested to us that we could go on tour as a hologram. And this is now four, five years ago, Björn Ulvaeus, ABBA’s 76-year-old guitarist, backup singer and co-songwriter said at a news conference. And we found out very soon that that wasn’t even possible because holograms is an old technology, but I mean, the vision was there of having our digital selves, that even was a possibility. And also, said Benny Andersson, 74, who plays keyboards, sings and writes songs with Ulvaeus, ‘we want to do it before we were dead.’