Illenium Brings Body-Ratting Bass To SXSW: 5 Best Moments From His Billboard Headlining Show

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.