Following one the biggest headlining performances of his career, debuting ÆDEN at the Coachella main stage, Anyma explains how the concept came to life. In a feature with DJ Mag Matteo Milleri known as Anyma has become one of the most influential names in electronic music. Creating a new audio-visual futuristic cinematic experience that has shaped modern electronic music.

“It’s about the synergy or the symbiosis between humans, machines and nature”

Milleri told DJ Mag “It’s just an unavoidable future in my opinion, where I try to have a positive take, even if some of the visuals look dark and scary, you know? I just feel it’s normal we’re gonna go through scary moments as a society, but I like to believe that we can live in harmony with artificial intelligence, that it’s gonna enhance and improve life. A lot of people seem to think that too. Being scared of it is potentially the worst thing we can do. Machine learning through creativity is a positive way to bring technology and artists together.”

He works with a visual creative team consisting of visual co-creative director Alessio De Vecchi and a team of others, he says he gets his inspiration from Japanese films and shows “I’ll give a lot of credit to the anime and manga world, and a lot of credit to classicism, Renaissance art, which is also where I grew up, you know, in the centre of Italy, seeing these massive statues,” Milleri says. “When we started the project, robotics and AI were very much in their inception. It wasn’t a thing yet when I started thinking about artificial intelligence and how it would interact with creativity and with humanity, and it’s a mix of these thoughts and my influences of anthropomorphic figures. I’ve always been interested in art, whether it’s Japanese anime like Evangelion or Ghost In The Shell, or a Michelangelo bust, you know? Combining these influences into something futuristic made Anyma come about.”

On his ‘Genesys’ trilogy of albums, Milleri explores similar themes. All the tracks were written to be incorporated into the live shows. “With the animated characters, I started finding names for them, and the songs were talking about the concept, so it was like a live scoring of this electronic dance music event and universe,” he says.

Anyma’s Sphere Las Vegas residency brought a whole new level of production to his show. For the run of 12 shows, titled ‘The End Of Genesys’, Milleri and De Vecchi had to employ a huge team of over 100 people in order to scale up their vision. “That’s the magnitude you need to create 3-D art in general,” Milleri says. “There is no one-man show here. You need hundreds of people.”

For his new project ÆDEN “The story is really about an uploaded intelligence that goes to this digital cloud realm, which I call ÆDEN, to look for, in a way, immortality, to see if you can upload your mind and remain a human. This world of AIs and AGIs [artificial general intelligence], it’s more their home than ours, the code world. We are guests. The reason my vision is neoclassical is that AI still needs something from humans — creativity and the drive to make art. This is just the beginning. I want to map the history of art through the ages and recreate this digital world where the AIs are revisiting this concept. What mankind has made remains intact, but glitched and in a way evolved visually in the digital world where humans and AI are trying to create a new society.”

[UNVRS] Ibiza, the biggest club in the world, will be one of the key settings for the ÆDEN show. After a sold-out Anyma residency last summer, Milleri will be returning. For him, the club offers a level of production and scale that others can’t quite match. “None of the other venues really permit me technically to express the full vision of a residency show like that,” he says. “So for me, it was really about making the space my own and using the incredible technical aspects and the production work of The Night League, which is very professional; they don’t say no to a crazy idea. It was really about the room — the roof is high, you can put in a lot of rigs, and the screen is big. So I was excited, and I think my show really shines in there.”

After a few months of rare downtime, Milleri is getting excited for the ÆDEN world tour. Plus, new music is still coming, including the recent track, ‘Bad Angel’, featuring K-pop superstar LISA from BLACKPINK. “Technically I already have an outline of something that looks like a record, but I’m not rushing into it,” Milleri says. “I’d rather take more time and get the best out of it, make a record that will take its point in time, you know?”

Some fans have wondered whether or not Tale Of Us will return, but currently the project’s future is uncertain, with Milleri putting his energy into his solo venture. “Right now Anyma is my main focus and is the most fulfilling outlet for me,” he says. “The story will always evolve rather than end.”

It’s going to be a busy year for Anyma, and a successful one too. He’s learning that trusting his instincts and believing in himself yields the best results. “How art gets from point A to point B these days is very interesting,” he concludes. “Not everything is as interconnected as it looks like from social media stats. I’m learning that and I’m starting to focus on following my gut and pushing the envelope, rather than worrying too much about that stuff.”