Artist of the Month: Anyma

When Anyma announced his Las Vegas Sphere residency, the first thing we saw was the gargantuan cyborg, Eva, shattering a pane of digital glass encasing the state-of-the-art venue's outer screen.

This extraordinary image is apposite. Anyma broke the boundaries of Sin City as the first electronic artist to hold a residency outside a club with his run of shows at Sphere. But in truth, breaking boundaries is ingrained into the fabric of the project.

Before Anyma, real name Matteo Milleri, touched down at Sphere, he introduced a type of epic visual performance that had never happened in dance music before. Milleri describes it as an cybernetic opera, using dynamic characters on enormous screens to tell an epic story depicting the pristine union between humanity, technology, and nature. 

The journey began at London’s Printworks in 2022, where the world first met Eva, suspended by ominous electronic cables feeding her life force into her mechanical body. Since then, Eva and the latter added characters Lilith, Syren, and Adam, have guided millions of dancers around the globe through their world that Anyma created alongside visual collaborators Alessio De Vecchi and Alexander Wessely.

In the wake of his cybernetic opera, festivals are altering their stages to provide him with the production he needs. This in turn has created opportunities for other artists to expand their own visual presentations, such as Sara Landry’s 'Eternalism' and Mathame’s 'NEO.'

Yet despite all this influence on the wider dance music community, Milleri remains humble and gracious:

“If other people get inspired by what I created, I'm happy. I'm happy to show the way for artists to get their music out through different mediums and different forms of expression,” Milleri tells Beatportal, admitting that for a long time the industry was against him when it came to the scope of his vision. Agents, promoters, and venues were reticent to take the risk. But now that they have, the entire industry has benefited.

“It's boosted that art economy. Not to mention all the digital artists that are now working and creating, and have way more mediums of financial return and expression. A whole ecosystem is being built around this,” Milleri says.

He is happy to have laid the groundwork for that ecosystem, but Milleri is already looking beyond what he’s created. As with many innovators, the constant drive of excitement is his motivation.

“I am over my style before the public even gets over it. I tend to really crave creating something new. It’s also my problem. I want to do things too fast. I do things before they have the right time and place. But as an artist, that’s how I thrive. Surprising myself with what I can do. Things that I thought were not possible, making them possible,” Milleri says.

Before the world once again experiences Milleri’s contrivance of the impossible, he has one last offering: his third artist album, The End of Genesys. 

“The End of Genesys” was the title of his Sphere residency, where Milleri played many of the tracks that will be on the album, including “Hypnotized” featuring Ellie Goulding and “Work” featuring Yeat. Over the past three records, Milleri has been fusing together the different musical avenues he’s been exploring of late: his persisting fascination with intricate electronics, his penchant for more emotional indie sounds, and his developing talent for pop-forward songwriting.

“All my influences of the last four years are in there, I really made sure that the sonics, the mixing, and the production were on a level that I would be proud of for a long time. It's the most timeless album I've done. Even more than [Genesys] and [Genesys II]. It's more mature. Every record has its story to tell,” Milleri says.

Looking ahead to the next phase, Milleri already has multiple ideas in motion. The operatic visual productions will remain a part of his artistry, but he is also keen to explore his roots as a DJ. Over the past couple of years, he’s revisited this territory in forums like Ultra Music Festival, where he played back-to-back with Solomun, and Coachella, where he shared a set with Eric Prydz. 

Neither set was attached to any particular production aesthetic, he was simply playing music for the crowd. In the near future, these types of sets could fuel an entirely separate project, even if he is a bit nervous about it.

“It's a bit intimidating, because these big crowds are always used to the visual show. But I want to show another side of me. In a different phase of my career, I will be able to be a DJ, a selector, and a curator of music, because that's what I've done all my life,” Milleri says, remarking on his success curating two record labels: Afterlife with Tale of Us and Life & Death with DJ Tennis.

Milleri will also explore a new sound with his original music in this upcoming phase. As a leader in the current iteration of melodic techno, he is happy to see it resonate with audiences and open the doors for other artists like Massano and Innellea to express their interpretations. However, as he said above, he is over his style before anyone else.

“I feel like the whole melodic techno genre has reached some sort of saturation point where I want to hear new sounds, and new sounds can be tested out in clubs and low-pressure environments,” Milleri says. 

Just like when he first ideated Adam, Eva, Lilith, and Syren, testing new kinds of music in different formats and spaces is fueling Milleri’s next titanic visual aesthetic, one small building block of inspiration at a time. 

The End of Genesys has yet to reach its denouement, so Milleri’s isn’t ready to reveal the full breadth of his vision quite yet, but quantum physics is a point of interest. Or rather, the principle of quantum physics that states what humans once thought to be impossible may actually be possible — that the rules we’ve lived by for centuries may not be rules at all if only we look deeper and deeper into our pure fundamentals.

“I want to surprise myself and the audience. Breaking the rules of what they have been feeling until now, with this formula I created. The quantum concept is also philosophically that. There is an alternate reality where things could be a little bit different, but also completely different, and things can morph,” Milleri says.

Initially, he describes a morph in sound with more groove than the melodic techno he played in the past, and a morph in visuals that won’t necessarily rely on “wow” moments alongside a massive drop. But these are only small components of what Milleri has in mind for his next chapter.

He’s arrived at "The End of Genesys" — or at least, the end as we know it. Whether it’s truly the final chapter or just another metamorphosis, one thing’s certain: whatever comes next from Anyma has the potential to reshape dance music all over again.

Listen to Anyma's 'Artist of the Month' chart below or check it out on Beatport.