Illenium

One Liner: More entirely generic EDM with the usual female singing platitudes

Wikipedia Genre: Future Bass, Trap, Dubstep
Home:  Denver

Poster Position: 5
Day: Sunday at 7:00
Both Weekends.

Thoughts: I knew what this music would sound like before I even heard it.  I literally searched for the band name, and said to myself, "will this be San Holo or Gryffin?"  And the answer is yes.  If they schedule the shows right, you might be able to just sit at one stage and hear the exact same sound for like 6 hours without ever moving or knowing who is on stage.  Magical.

If you are super into electronic medium-level bangers with an unknown female voice (Annika Wells?  Nevve?  Kerli?  Daya? Emilie Brandt?  Dia Frampton?  RUNN?  Ember Island? - no shit, all of those are lady singers on this one album.  I didn't make up a single one.) singing over them about life and wonder and love and hope, then this is your jam.  Every once in a while you get a dude voice, although again I don't know those names either (MAX?  That's it, just MAX?  Nope, just MAX.).

Two albums, 2016's Ashes and 2017's Awake.  Hoping we can soon experience a new album called Able or Amazing or Anustart.  The top track for this guy on Spotify isn't even his own song.  And guess who it is by?  Gryffin.  Sometimes I amaze even myself.  That one is "Feel Good," which I recognize so I probably linked to it in the Gryffin review.  So after that one (which has 86 million streams), this guy's most listened-to track is "Fractures," which has 32.5 million streams.

Yeah, man.  Do or die, yo.  She runs full speed at what she wants, bro.  Gotta get it while we're still young!  We're finally not afraid!  Yeah!  
That play count is kind of weird, right?  Why is Gryffin lower on the poster than this dude, when Gryffin has the more popular stuff?  Interesting.  Hardcore negotiations by agents.  I want to see an ACL contract, actually.  Would be interesting to see what they say.  SOMEONE GET PAUL ROSENBERG ON THE PHONE!

So this dude was a lacrosse bro, who purportedly went to college for lax, but then started making sick beats yo.  Grew up in SF and then moved to Colorado.  That link is to a weird interview, like a woman walking down the sidewalk with this guy walking right behind her and answering questions.  Odd.  But he says he grew up on country music nonstop, which is odd as well.  And then he says he tried to make music in high school but he sucked at it.  Well, yeah.  And then a Bassnectar show at Red Rocks changed his world, and so he taught himself how to do this music through YouTube.  Why haven't I done this?  If all I have to do is watch some YouTube and then be a rich guy who just hits play in front of a crowd, what am I waiting for?

Second most listened to track is called "Crawl Outta Love," with 22 million streams.

Yeah, this is just nothing special at all.  I will not remember this 10 minutes from now, sounds just like 100 songs I've heard before it.  The singing, the beats, the chopped up singing to mix it up after the beat drops.  Boring.

One more try, let's see what the live experience looks like.  Here is an hour long video from a festival called Lost Lands 2017.

1) Nice basketball jersey with your name on it.  2) Nice drum pad for the intro, so powerful.  (although after watching this for a while, I tend to think those drum pads aren't connected.  He keeps hitting and nothing happens). 3) The people trying to dance to "Crawl Outta Love" make me realize that it is a little bit too slow for people to actually bounce to after the drop, its just not quite at the right beat for people, so you can see their hands trying to bang but being all out of sync and jerky.  

I made it about 8 minutes.  I'm just a man, not a machine.  Also, know that his older album is much worse than the new album.  That isn't saying much, but if you are going to give one album a try, go for the new one.  I do not appreciate what this guy has going on.