Pulse Evolution and Simon Fuller’s work to create Virtual ABBA gives the world an unexpected Surprise…an ABBA reunion!

 

In March of 2016, Facebank Group subsidiary, Pulse Evolution Corporation, announced a landmark partnership with accomplished producer Simon Fuller to co-produce a series of entertainment properties and virtual reality experiences featuring Pulse’s market leading digital human technology. Pulse Evolution’s John Textor and his team of incredible artists walked ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaes and Benny Andersson through their California Studio, the original home of George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic and, more recently with Pulse, the birthplace of some of the world’s most believable digital human beings.

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Having already spent months in development, and meeting Benny, Bjorn and the Universal Music team in the Pulse Evolution studios, it was obvious that something special would happen…a virtual entertainment performance that would stand above all prior holographic performances…living celebrities that would be the first to explore their own digital likeness to fully extend themselves, creatively and commercially, in front of a global audience that cannot wait to see them perform again.

 

In their time with Bjorn and Benny, it was clear to the team at Pulse that these men were not your average semi-retired music icons.  They were also technophiles. They already had their own holographic experience created for their fans in Stockholm and they knew what quality looked like in the nascent, quickly evolving world of human animation. ABBA represented the perfect opportunity for Pulse to show the world that ‘digital likeness’ was not for the ‘late’, but for the living.

 

What no one knew, really, was what was going on in Bjorn and Benny’s mind, and how their ABBA band partners, Anni Frid and Agnetha, would react when deciding to go forward with the Virtual ABBA project.

 

Then on April 27, 2018, the official ABBA Instagram account shares this news with their fans…

 

“The decision to go ahead with the exciting ABBA avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence. We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did. And it was like time had stood still and that we had only been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyful experience!  It resulted in two new songs and one of them ‘I Still Have Faith In You’ will be performed by our digital selves in a TV special produced by NBC and the BBC.” –

 

Signed off as “Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn, Anni-Frid - Stockholm, Sweden, 27 April 2018.”

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…and that’s how music history is made.  The brilliant digital artists that brought us Benjamin Button, Tron:Legacy, Virtual Tupac and Virtual Michael Jackson should all feel good about their contribution when the whole world is singing along to the first new ABBA music to be heard in 35 years!