ABBA are set for a long awaited virutal world tour - but what does that mean?

It looks like that long-awaited ABBA world tour is on the cards, albeit with a slight catch. Universal Music Group chairman Lucian Grainge confirmed during the company’s earnings call on Thursday that the ABBA: Voyage production will be exhibited throughout the rest of the world, after a successful residency at a custom-built venue in London last year.

Exhibited? Slight catch? For the uninitiated, ABBA Voyage was indeed a performance from Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, but rather than go on stage themselves, holographic avatars were used for the performances instead. Similar to when Tupac Shakur guested with Dr. Dre at the 2012 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.

The original members had painstakingly gone through motion capture to ensure that their movements and idiosyncrasies were picked up, and though technology aficionados will tell you that the performance isn’t by holograms, we’re stumped as to what else we could call it - though the crew at George Lucas’ influential Industrial Light & Magic have taken to referring to the Swedish fab four as “ABBA-Tars.”

ABBA Voyage, as Variety described it during their report of a global tour, represents a new peak in that type of technology — the four band members, who are now in their seventies, spent many hours performing for the motion-capture cameras to appear as lifelike as possible. It has received rave reviews nearly across the board.

Though no dates have been suggested, it is the first time since the London shows that word of a world tour has finally been made a matter of public record, which means there have been serious discussions (finally) about the retro-futuristic concert/show finally wowing ABBA-fanatics outside of the UK.