Nothing about Illenium’s Odyssey was normal. The DJ and producer began his sixth studio album exclusively with a Sphere residency in mind. Every visual, every track was designed with the goal of performing on the world’s most technologically advanced musical stage.
“Everything is a brand-new experience. Nothing has been seen. Everything that I do, I love making a world around it,” Illenium tells the Weekly. “I’m a big movie nerd, and I love video games and just being sucked into something. We wrote a very rough outline of what became a really beautiful journey of pretty much finding balance between light and dark, finding peace in suffering—all this stuff that I really care about, that I get from music.”
The 19-track album is a euphoric voyage, magnified by Illenium’s moody melodies, chill-worthy choruses and gritty, synth-laden textures. Where tracks like “Forever” build to a swelling hook of harmonies undercut by bass and drums, others like “War” punch through the reverie with metallic, punk-infused precision.
Thousands will get to experience EDM through Illenium’s cinematic lens, along with immersive visuals by Berlin-based animation studio Woodblock. And this isn’t the first time he’s had a major milestone play out on the Strip. The DJ’s last history-making move happened in 2021, when he became the first musician to perform at Allegiant Stadium. Performing his album trilogy—Ashes, Awake and Ascend—there marked a capstone in his career.
With his nine-show residency running through April 4 at Sphere, he’ll soon reach another.
When you first toured Sphere, it wasn’t even built yet. Could you envision the possibilities at that point?
When I was visiting, I was actually here doing our first tour of Allegiant Stadium for the trilogy, and so that was all that was on my mind. I only had so much capacity. But I knew for sure, maybe within a close amount of time of visiting it, that it was going to be game-changing in terms of an artist wanting to create an immersive experience. There’s nothing like that, especially the first show I saw, which was Dead [& Company]. It’s just nuts when you step into it, when it’s all done. That’s when I was like, oh f**k, this is crazy. And each show I’ve been to, I think each artist has crushed it and done such cool, unique new stuff.
Anyma was the first EDM show at Sphere. What did you think of how he utilized the venue for his set?
I think he crushed it. His brand and his entire visual team have always been so emotional and really high quality. He had a really good balance of everything, I think. It was a bit long, in my opinion, but I think the whole thing was extremely well done. It was just good music, and it was cool that he had so much unreleased music when he was playing it there. I kind of went the other way. I really wanted my album to be out first. For me, I just have such a better time when people are a little bit more familiar with it.
Your Allegiant Stadium show was a big moment for Vegas, and it also closed the chapter on those albums in a symbolic way. What era does Odyssey represent for you musically?
Musically, with the show always being in the back of my mind, it was really fun to create from the ground up. I’d look at a scene like, I want to write a song for this scene, which is something that I’ve never gotten to do. I feel like the undertone of the entire album is much more electronic; it’s EDM with an undertone of cinematic in everything. And I think jumping back and forth with genres is okay as long as there’s a similar undertone. Like, I love Hans Zimmer stuff and having those types of moments in each song helps you be able to jump around and be creative with different genres.
I’m a big Hans fan myself. What movies inspire you?
Dune: Part Two, 100%. Dune: Part Two is one of the greatest f**king things of all time (laughs). I feel like we’re very much inspired by that. Or a lot of really fun sci-fi stuff that I nerd out on so hard. I love Star Wars. I think it’s gone a little bit downhill, but I think Andor is sick.
“Slave to the Rithm” with Bring Me the Horizon’s Oli Sykes also gives me hardcore Blade Runner vibes.
Oli too. He literally said, “I wanted more Blade, I wanted more Blade.’ But he was talking about the Wesley Snipes Blade. There’s a great scene that uses that same acidy sound.
Being a producer, sound and mixing is obviously very important. How did you go about creating the show with that in mind, especially given Sphere’s crazy audio capabilities?
The process started with writing the music, making an outline of the show with the music. Then I finished the album, made it in normal stereo, and then I went back to the show. Pretty much every song is now in millions of parts, and I’m remaking it all song by song. It’s a tedious process, but it’s so cool when you get it right.
I think what’s really unique about our show is we went really heavy into sound design for the visual, outside of the music. We can mute the music, and ... we’ve created sound for the visual just alone. Everything has movement and that’s like, almost making a movie in that sense.
This is a beefy album with 19 tracks, and every song has a collab on it.
I love working with vocals.
When you’re creating music, are you bringing ideas to the collaborator or do you prefer to start from scratch together?
Seventy percent of the album was, I got into a room with another writer and a singer, and we pretty much started from scratch, where I’d maybe record a guitar riff or piano chords, something really simple. I love starting as simple as possible and then writing the song that day. Generally starting with the chorus, and then a lot of that was also like, there’s this scene in the show. This is what’s going to be happening on the screen, and I really want a song for that. So, you have that for inspiration, which is really fun.
You have a lot of sessions where you spend 12 hours on stuff, and the next day you’re like, it didn’t work. There’s a lot of ebbs and flows, but when you do have something that’s like, okay, this is perfect, then I go hard on production at that point. But there’s a lot of times where ... someone will send me a song that has very basic production and the vocal, and I’ll take the vocal and get rid of typically all the production and just start fresh.
You’ve been running through all the songs at this point. Which sequences do you anticipate giving fans chills?
There’s a moment with my new song, “Paris,” and I matched it up with an old song of mine, “Gorgeous.” That moment in the Sphere is so sick, just with the visuals that are happening. It’s very cool. I think “Slave to the Rithm” is awesome. It’s psychotic and freaking crazy with the visual we have. There’s a lot of sick moments. The “Into the Dark” moment is also fire at the show. It’s very much story driven, emotional. We have a string quartet for the show, so there’s this really cool cello movement for it.
How do you think this next-level show is going to deepen the connection you already have with fans?
Everyone involved has been really on the same path, and I think we’ve created a really moving story. There’s really dope highs, and there’s intense lows and dark moments. I think it’s gonna be a really cleansing experience. I saw M83 at Red Rocks, and that was a cleansing f**king experience (laughs). It felt really beautiful. That type of experience at this place, I feel like it takes you to the next level.
ILLENIUM: ODYSSEY March 5-7 & 12-14, April 2-4, 9:30 p.m., $136+. Sphere, ticketmaster.com.
Click HERE to subscribe for free to the Weekly Fix, the digital edition of Las Vegas Weekly! Stay up to date with the latest on Las Vegas concerts, shows, restaurants, bars and more, sent directly to your inbox!
Listen to this story:
