This week, ILLENIUM will join the ranks of Metallica, U2, Dead & Co, and Eagles when he steps on stage at the Las Vegas Sphere to open ODYSSEY, his residency running nine dates between 5 March and 4 April.

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For roughly 90 minutes, the audience will engage with a 16K, wrap-around screen and 167,000 individually amplified loudspeaker drivers as two warriors battle to a soundtrack that ILLENIUM, real name Nick Miller, crafted specifically for this show.

For over a year, the producer, DJ, and multi-instrumentalist captained a crew of more than 100 people: management, media, lighting, special effects, visual designers, sound engineers, production, performers, and more, to bring this multimedia sensory experience to life.

Miller has been directing electronic music performances on a large scale for years. In 2021 and 2023, he led his Trilogy stadium shows, which used two different stages for three distinct sets, one of which featured a five-piece band. But even with that history, working in the Sphere, with its state-of-the-art immersive visual and audio capabilities, represented a special opportunity.

“I’ve been touring for over 10 years, and I’ve done the ‘make an album, make a cool live show’ [thing]. I always love doing that, but I wanted something refreshing and challenging,” Miller says. “Where can we creatively make an impact? At Sphere, you can just do so much more. It is one of a kind. You could work for 10 years on a [Sphere] show if you wanted to. You would still be pushing things. So, to have the opportunity to do that, I gotta take it. I gotta build everything around that.”

Miller’s last point was literal — he produced his new album, ODYSSEY, specifically to fuel his Sphere performance. But building everything around the residency goes one layer deeper: Miller and the core members of his team developed new skillsets and ventured into new technical areas to maximise the experience at the venue.

Miller has learned a type of Ableton-based performance he’s never employed before. Cameron Scurek, Miller’s front-of-house engineer and crew chief, worked with spatial engineers for as many as 12 hours per song in the set. They mixed each one, placing every audio element throughout Sphere’s expanded range precisely. Miller’s visual director, Sandy Meidinger, flew to Berlin to work directly with Woodblock Animation Studios on the 90-minute narrative that was built from storyboards, just like an animated feature film.

“I’ve been touring for over 10 years, and I’ve done the ‘make an album, make a cool live show’ [thing]. I always love doing that, but I wanted something refreshing and challenging”

Leading by example as he takes new challenges head-on is key to Miller’s leadership style on these big shows.

“Nick decides he wants to do something, and I feel like I’m not ready to do it, but he forces me into the position. Then I grow and get a lot of new skills,” Meidinger says. She adds that, beyond the prospect of learning everything new for Sphere, the bar of what to expect was high following Anyma’s Sphere residency last year. “We have to stand out. We have to be the best. Sometimes it’s difficult to deal with the pressure, but we’ve been working together for so long, I always feel supported. It’s not only on my shoulders.”

Miller and Meidinger started collaborating in 2016. She was there for every show that set a new standard, from Illenium’s first arena show onwards. So, when it came time to develop the visual element for Sphere, he trusted her completely. That made it seamless for the Woodblock team to fold into their longstanding dynamic.

“You are always going in the same direction. It felt very natural to be part of that. It didn’t feel like there was any conflict, or different visions of what this should be,” says Ilija Brunck, CEO of Woodblock, referring to Meidinger on a shared Zoom call. “‘Let’s embark on this journey. Let’s do it together.’ We all worked towards the same goal.”

With Meidinger and Woodblock in sync, Miller’s involvement in the visuals expanded into an oversight role. They regularly checked in with him for feedback, and, like a film director, he was there to ensure everything on Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot screen aligned with his vision —with the story he wanted to tell.

“I called it ODYSSEY because it’s a journey of really beautiful moments, and really dark and intense moments,” Miller shares. “It’s balance, having a light side and a dark side, yin and yang, acceptance.”

In truth, the idea of the story was all Meidinger and Woodblock had to go on at first. The visual process began before Miller even finished the album. It was January 1, 2025. He and Meidinger saw Anyma’s show at Sphere, and the inspiration flooded from there:

“Nick was like, ‘We don’t have the show yet, but just act like we do,’” Meidinger says. “‘Start reaching out to studios. Start figuring things out.’”

Woodblock Animation was the natural choice because it also produced Anyma’s set. By the following March, they had a PDF of a rough layout and a few paragraphs of text. Then, until August, when Miller finished the album, he and Meidinger would take time while they were still on tour to pass notes back to Woodblock.

Their initial goal was to convert the music and the story into key scenes that formed a foundation, but could also be altered as changes were made during the creative construction of the visuals. Once they had the music, it was full speed ahead. 65 animators worked in Houdini [3D animation software] to design the images.

“You can compare it to when you adapt a book for a feature film. You cannot translate a story one-to-one because there are certain scenic rules and editing rules. It’s a different narrative structure,” says co-founder of Woodblock, Jan Bitzer. “You can think of Sphere in the same way. The ideas were there, but you have to adapt them to that special format. It was a super fun part of the project—trying to distil key moments of the story into bite-sized scenarios that propel the story forward, but are not too complex.”

Now, with the months-long process just about complete, Meidinger has seen the story of the visuals unfold before her:

“It’s a story of two female warriors. They’re searching for something, and ultimately, they find each other,” Meidinger says. “They find wholeness. They find a state of rest—a state of being complete.”

It’s Miller’s job to direct the warriors through their journey with the music and performance. The album complements the emotional peaks and valleys of the story with his celebrated talent for dynamic range. Softer tracks, such as the pure orchestral composition, Monster, suggest they will come to rest. But along the way, there will be intense battles fueled by the blaring intensity of Slave to the Rithim, Miller’s electronic/metal collaboration with Bring Me the Horizon.

“I built the album thinking of the show constantly, but this also needs to be a beautiful standalone album. I would never get behind something that is just a sidestep to something else,” Miller says. “I really care about my albums, and I feel like it turned out to be the most interesting of all [of them]. I did different things production-wise and songwriting-wise. The undertone throughout each song is not a signature sound, but a familiar feeling.”

Miller is quick to admit the familiar feeling for ILLENIUM is grand euphoria, shepherded by his favourite software tools: Sylenth, Omnisphere, and Serum 2. The album (and surely the show) offers many of those moments through his classic melodic bass sound, as on In My Arms, the soaring collaboration with HAYLA, and the cinematics of I’ll Come Runnin’, the co-production with Zeds Dead.

But, like the rest of his team, Miller pushed himself out of his comfort zone to honour the grand undertaking of Sphere. On ODYSSEY, he explored more production techniques specific to house music, while still integrating that familiar feeling of dramatic EDM. On some tracks, it’s more pronounced, such as with the golden age EDM throwback With Your Love, but on the progressive roller To The Moon, the ILLENIUM frivolity sneaks in during the breakdown like fireflies buzzing in the middle of the night.

When Miller’s on stage at Sphere, he’ll control and improvise with different bounced out stems from his tracks. He has two Audima Labs Sway motion controllers. Rather than playing keys, simple hand movements will activate chosen sounds in precise reaction to the music and what he’s feeling in the moment. Another is the Embodme Erae 2, a MIDI controller with 3D touch, which he uses for looping sequences and controlling instruments.

When I chat with Miller, he has been practising on this new rig for months already, dialling in different effects and other settings so he can operate freely without worrying too much about mistakes.

“It’s gonna be really simple, fun, and ideally hard to make mistakes. When I play guitar, I fuck up a lot, and here I want to make it a lot more seamless and safe,” Miller says. “If I have all my settings right, it’s not gonna destroy the sound too dramatically. It takes some fine-tuning, but there’s a nice balance of doing all of these live edits in a really cool way, but not too aggressively.”

This isn’t just another DJ set. It’s an entire cinematic production. Film scores don’t mess up in the theatre, and after over a year of hard work, he wants to stand on that stage and deliver the best experience possible for himself, his team, and the hundreds of thousands of fans that will show up throughout all nine shows:

“When it comes down to it, I want to make music that gives people a moment to be fully encapsulated by the sound,” Miller says. “We gave all of our final notes [on the show], and some of them are gonna be accomplished, and some can’t, and that’s just, like, part of the deal. But I think it’s probably gonna get to 97%, which is pretty damn good.”

The post “You could work for 10 years on a Sphere show if you wanted to”: Inside the creation of Illenium’s odyssey appeared first on MusicTech.