Illenium helped close out SXSW 2024 with a performance that was quite certainly one of the week’s heaviest when he played the third and final show of Billboard’s annual THE STAGE at SXSW concert series on Saturday, March 17.
While the evening forecast in Austin had called for thunderstorms, the weather cooperated and no storms, or even sprinkles, materialized during the sold-out show. The performance drew 5,000 people — many of them wearing the jerseys that are Illenium’s signature merch item — to Austin’s Moody Amphitheater within Waterloo Park.
The night opened with a set from Canadian producer Fairlane, who played a litany of remixes of emo and nu-metal classics by artists including Fall Out Boy, Green Day and Linkin Park, adding his own guitar solos over many of them.
Then, Illenium — who also wore an Illenium jersey, along with a backwards baseball hat — came onstage at 9:30 p.m. and immediately launched into a giddily heavy set built from body-pummeling bass music interspersed with his signature pop oriented future bass anthems and a litany of tracks by a strong crew of other bass realm artists. The atmosphere in the park was hyped throughout the set, which was punctuated by bursts of fire emanating from the stage, along with dynamic visuals.
THE STAGE takes place from March 14-16 as part of SXSW, Austin’s annual music, film and tech festival, and features performances from Billboard’s latest cover stars: PartyNextDoor, Christian Nodal, and Illenium.
Last year’s THE STAGE headliners included Lil Yachty, Feid and Kx5.
Read on for the five best moments from Illenium’s show below.
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Everyone Going For It In The Crowd
There was a buzz in the air before, during and after the performance, with a sense of palpable excitement emanating from the sold-out crowd. Respect to everyone assembled in the pit, and a special shout out to all the people head-banging directly in the front of the stage.
In terms of big time body movement though, the edge of the crowd is often the best place to really dance hard, and during Illenium’s set it was here that many people were spotted flailing their limbs around, spinning in circles and generally really going for it on the amphitheater’s grassy lawn. Such fringe dwellers included large groups of friends, couples and a few people who looked to be at the show alone but seemed to be having just as much fun as anyone else on site.
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Incorporating His Peers
Naturally, Illenium played a lot of his own music — including hits like “Take You Down,” The Chainsmokers and Lennon Stella collab “Takeaway” and his track with Teddy Swims “All That Really Matters” — along with a glut of music by other bass world stars.
Featured tracks included the Reaper Remix of Griz and Subtronics’ “GRIZTRONICS,” Excision and Wooli’s “Lockdown,” “Seven Lions’ “Rush Over Me,” “how2fly” by ISOxo, Knock2’s “murdah” and other Illenium collabs with cohorts like Said The Sky and Spiritbox. Altogether, the hour and 15 minute show was built from a selection of tracks that together emphasized how both legendary and rising artists are clocking bangers and pushing boundaries in this hard-edged realm of electronic music.
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A Preview Of a Forthcoming Collab
In his Billboard cover story, Illenium revealed that he’ll be releasing a series of singles during 2024 with collaborators including REZZ, Tiësto and Mike Shinoda. The SXSW audience got a preview of the song likely coming soonest, with Illenium dropping “Not Even Love,” a collab with Seven Lions that the pair performed together during Illenium’s Trilogy shows in Los Angeles last month and which they’ve been heavily previewing online in the last few weeks. The song is the followup to their 2016 collab “Rush Over Me,” which also showed up during the set.
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One Delightful Non Sequitur
Just when it seemed like the bass couldn’t get any heavier or more aggressive, Illenium found a way to make the sound even bigger, wilder and more pummeling, giving the whole show a giddy off-the-rails vibe. It was thus a fun and surprising moment when, amid all the heavy stuff, he dropped Alice Deejay’s 1997 Eurodance classic “Better Off Alone” and for a brief minute connected the show to past eras and other sonic realms of electronic music.
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The Visuals
While the music itself alternated between heavy and soaring, the images playing in tandem echoed this dichotomy. Illenium shows are known for their dynamic visual component, and during this show imagery included animated wolves and phoenixes engaged in an epic, Lord of The Rings-style battle, a Tyrannosaurus Rex made of fire, animated landscapes from forests to deserts to vast oceans, to darker visuals like zombies (which showed up on screen when Illenium played his remix of The Cranberries’ 1994 classic “Zombie”) and images of gnashing fangs and glowing skulls.