Illenium logs onto Zoom from his Los Angeles home studio in a moment of relative chill, given what his last year has been like.
The producer born Nick Miller released his sixth studio album, Odyssey, today (Feb. 6) and on March 6 will launch a nine-date Sphere residency of the same name that will make him the second electronic artist in history after Anyma to headline the venue.
As such, Illenium and his team have spent the last year creating an entirely new world around the project, with the process starting with the creation of a storyline for the show that then inspired Odyssey. The LP is Illenium’s first with Republic Records, and includes collaborators Ellie Goulding, Kid Cudi, Bring Me the Horizon, Dabin, Alok and Ryan Tedder. Odyssey also finds the producer, whose work pioneered the future bass genre, leaning into house, tech house and trance of the first time.
After the story and the visuals and the album was finished, the work continued, with Illenium spending, he says, “eight to 20 hours per song” to mix the album into spatial audio, a technological component of Sphere that Illenium is employing more than any other artist who’s played a residency there thus far. As he tells it to Billboard, it’s all coming together well enough to leave him with a big smile on his face during rehearsals.
“The only people that are probably going to notice [the spatial stuff] are those who’ve been to Sphere before for shows without it, but people that are going there for the first time are probably just going be like, ‘Wow, that sounded really good.’ It’s like, “Goddammit, we worked so hard on that!’”
So how did this new album Odyssey come about?
For me to really grind on an album, I have to put so much love behind it. I had done five albums, an album every two years, and was going to take a year to chill, to collect my thoughts and figure out what I really wanted to pursue. I’m so glad I did. I still worked on music in that time, a couple singles, the Ellie Golding song that I’m putting out, but I wasn’t grinding on an album yet.
When did that shift?
I really started once Sphere came into the picture about 14 months ago. Once we did the storyboard for that and had a world built for the show, I knew I needed a new album for it. It needed to be completely fresh. I wanted to make music for this storyline for the show and have brand new visuals, brand new music, everything new. I’m so glad I did that, because it turned into this major focus where I had tunnel vision for what I needed to do, and that was super fun.
I was wondering if Sphere came first and then the album, or vice versa?
Without going into a two hour ramble, last January we decided we were going to shoot for a Sphere residency. In order to do that, we needed a story. We were like, “We want to make a movie.” Every show I’ve seen there has done an amazing job pushing boundaries, but I do feel like there’s room to push the combination of an immersive show and a movie storyline that’s impactful, emotional and has this captivating immersion to it.
How did you do that?
The first phase was getting the storyboard. The story is very much a metaphor for accepting the dark and light parts of yourself, going through a journey of accepting who you are and that there’s beautiful aspects to the light and beautiful aspects to the darkness. It’s really a roller coaster ride of that yin and yang, made at a macro scale. We use a lot of space and black holes and visuals of worlds being created in these two polar opposite… I just got obsessed with this whole storyline.
If it’s a movie, are there characters?
Yes, it gets really intricate with the character development. We wrote that, then I would have a reference image and a scene, then we would go in the studio and write a song to that scene. Building the show was building the album at the same time. It was totally in tandem. The show has a different layout and order and a lot of different edits, and the album has a different ebb and flow to it
That’s interesting given that the last time we spoke you said you were interested in film scoring, although I can’t image you thought it’d be like this. Are you saying that you’re playing the show in order of the album tracklist?
Not at all. I built the show first and then went back and finished the album. Normally it’s album first, then the show.
Obviously Sphere is so different than any other show you’ve done. Who did you work with to make it and how complicated was it to do?
[Laughs] That’s another two hour conversation. The first show I saw was Dead & Co., and then I saw Anyma, and then Backstreet Boys. I think all three of them did a fantastic job. I mean, the canvas you get there is just so different creatively. You get so many more possibilities and so much more immersion — the haptic seats, the spatial audio, which a lot of artists haven’t fully used to its full potential. We’re going fricken’ HAM on all that.
When you saw Anyma and Backstreet Boys, did you know by that point that you were doing your own show there?
When I saw Anyma we were talking to them and going through the approval process, so I knew it was a potential, but it wasn’t confirmed. Backstreet Boys, yes, we were already working on it.
You said you and the team were “shooting for a sphere show,” so obviously it’s something you knew was a possibility. How did you guys get it across the finish line?
Once it became a reality, the only way to do it was to fully commit. It became our entire focus for 12 to 14 months. Not just myself, but my whole team. The only way to do it is to make it your entire life.
You’re working with the Woodblock animation studio on the visuals, right?
That’s my entire visual team, and they’re freaking awesome. My mind is very character driven, so we took a while to fine tune the characters and how we want them to look, walk and fly. So then you get sketches of those characters in each scene, then we start dissecting like, “We really want this part to be impactful and for everything to flow with the music.” Everything needs to be driving to the music.
No matter how amazing all the shows I’ve seen at Sphere have been, I feel like there needs to be more [emphasis] on those impactful musical moments and really driving with them, really feeling it. That’s where that immersion element comes in so well. A big moment starts coming, and you feel a rumble in your seats that takes you to this rumble you see visually. It’s very tied together.
If you’re saying it’s like a movie, is there going be dialog?
There’s no dialog, actually, besides one tiny piece at the very beginning. It’s tricky, because we’re going to make a movie and tell a story, but nobody gets to talk. That’s where writing for the scenes is so helpful. For example there’s this one moment called “Into the Dark,” and it’s the intro song to my album, and it’s these two characters coming into contact for the first time, and they have to follow each other into the dark. The lyrics work with what’s happening visually really well, so it’s almost like writing for a movie.
The music is the dialog.
Yeah, exactly.
Will there be any of symbolism that we’ve seen previously in your shows and that have defined your world and aesthetic for a long time? Are you adapting that pre-existing world?
Not exactly. The world is new. There are similarities in terms of the phoenix being present, but not as constantly present. I love like that the phoenix is kind of godly or higher power-esque figure that has these special powers and can create worlds, and from the ashes of a feather can create an entire universe type of thing. I like that kind of massive thought.
It’s like the end of Men in Black when you find out it’s all taken place in marble of some alien.
Right there! Spoiler alert. There’s some cool stuff.
Did signing with Republic during this time open any opportunities for you and make the album process in any way different?
They’ve been such a family vibe. When we signed with them, they knew we were doing Sphere. It was pretty much like “I’ve got a quick timeline. We’ve got to go!” I went from not doing much to “We’ve got to go hard, fast.”
They’ve been so supportive. I love everyone on the team. I’ve been through a lot of different label families, and there’s always pros to a lot of them, and cons to some, and I feel like overall, Republic has been really invested in what I want to do as an artist creatively. They’re excited to be a part of Sphere and were super helpful, because I had to get so many sessions done in a short amount of time. I had to write that album in six months, really.
I was just listening to the Ellie Goulding track “Don’t Want Your Love,” which really goes and also feels like an evolution for you in terms of having a more tech house sound.
For sure. I haven’t dabbled in the house or trance space a lot, and had so much fun working on that. “Feels Like You” with Ellie Duhé too, I love that song. I had a really fun time implementing my sound into that genre. There were some amazing vocals that called for it, that I was like, “I’ve just got to go to this world, it’s just meant to be there.”
Do you think your fans are ready for these kind of genre diversions?
I can’t wait for them to hear the Bring Me the Horizon collab. That thing is fully psychotic. I haven’t made a song that aggressive ever. Fans that want the same half-time big synth drops, they’ll get some of that, but I want to mess around. I don’t want to just do that constantly. There are some amazing songs that are very Illenium sounding, but there are diverse songs too. At first people might get tripped up on that, but with a second or third listen, I think people are going to get really obsessed.
The atmosphere at Sphere obviously changes so much from artist to artist. The Dead shows were a super Dead vibe and the Anyma shows were very futuristic and techno. I feel like your people are gonna create a really nice atmosphere.
I can’t wait. It’s getting to the point where I am personally blown away by being there and looking and watching. I cannot f–king wait to see fans in it. Right now I’m just in an empty venue with a huge smile on my face. Every run-through I’m like, “Wow, this is gonna be f–king insane.”
I’m so excited for you to have the moment of the first note of the first show.
I don’t get that nervous for a lot of shows, but I’m sure I’ll be f–king losing my fricken self.
You’ve already done such big stuff, like your stadium shows. I’d been wondering how you’d do anything bigger than what you’d already achieved, so this all makes perfect sense.
Creatively, doing a stadium show is so fun. I do get nervous for those, but it doesn’t take as much longterm work as a Sphere show. The rush of a stadium show is really fricken’ crazy. You almost have your own show that you’re watching from the stage, because it’s so massive and we have so many lighting effects out in the crowd.
But the Sphere residency is a whole different type of work. I’ve never done a lot of this. It’s super immersive. We’re adding sound effects to all these these visual aspects and layering with the music and making edits. It really feels like making a movie, which is so fun, because I love that s–t.
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