Anyma

Introduction

He makes the records and the pictures himself, his own account of the split, evenly between the two, and his description of where the project sits is that it "lies at the intersection between like art, music, and technology like at its core". He says of how it came out, unplanned, "it wasn't like some sort of premeditated operation like it was very organic". He makes both halves himself, so an Anyma show is written as one thing and the pictures are never put to a finished record.3,4

The career, by era

2008 to 2020Milan, Berlin and Afterlife

He met his future Tale of Us partner, Carmine Conte, in Milan, where he was studying sound engineering at the SAE Institute. In 2009 they moved to Berlin, to concentrate on music. He says of that period: "we started in Berlin." In Berlin his friends were working on tape machines and modular synthesisers, while he worked on a computer running an early Logic. He remembers what they told him about the machine: that he was "going to be eaten by it your soul is gone" (he remembers them saying). He taught himself to produce from YouTube, over five years. That five years learning from YouTube, against friends who warned him off the computer, is why the Anyma work is made on a screen, he says. He recalls the difficulties of that early software: "the first logics were like not very easy to use. They had the environment you had to plug in the cables." But, he reasons, "it was the same as having a studio just with a mouse", and then, of the machine his friends distrusted, he adds that "looking back sometimes I'm very proud of like beautiful records" (asked about the Berlin years he answered).1,5,2,4

He debuted on Barraca Music in early 2010. The pair's trajectory took in Life and Death, Seth Troxler's Visionquest, Richie Hawtin's Minus, and then R&S. From 2016, they became the defining act of Afterlife, a party at Space Ibiza and, later, a label. The label's first release was the Realm Of Consciousness compilation, on 24 June, which carried a Tale Of Us track called Lies. In 2017, they released Endless on Deutsche Grammophon, described as that label's first album of original material from a club act.5,2,6

2021 to 2022The head that came alive

The project that would become Anyma began with a piece of digital art made with Alessio De Vecchi. It had no music on it initially; a piece of music was paired to it afterwards. He describes its genesis: "It was just the head of a robot in the beginning and didn't have a soul yet." His response to it was to ask, "why am I resonating so strong with this head".

When the chords went through it, he remembers, "something came alive". Anyma was announced publicly on 19 and 20 May 2021. The first release was the Sentient EP, on Afterlife Recordings, on 4 June, followed by the Claire video in July. The first audiovisual pieces were played in Tulum, before there was a tour behind it.4,1,7

He notes that the project "wasn't even supposed to tour at this point", of the point the first show came at. Asked whether he had seen where it was going, he answered, "I didn't have the whole vision at once." His first solo show was the Genesys production at Printworks London in November 2022, a year after the head. The character Eva was unveiled there.4,2,8,9

He calls that show mostly a failure, despite at least six months of work; only a reported fifth of the planned visuals ran. The head was a picture before it was music, and that order is what made the Printworks show of 2022 a failure in his terms, measured by its screens. He sees the breakthrough differently, saying, "that was the breakthrough in my opinion", referring to the moment the music met the image, not the failed live show.2,8,9

2023 to 2024Siren, a small club in Basel

Siren was made with Rebuke, after a syncopated record of Rebuke's; the two of them set out to make a chaotic one. He says, "it was a weird song to be honest". He first played it in a small club in Basel, unmastered, with no screens in the room. He remembers the moment: "there was no screens nothing and I remember playing that song not knowing what would happen". The crowd there reacted the way the largest crowds later did. "I knew I was on to something because I got super excited about the song after I played it live," he says.4

Genesys, the first album, was released on 11 August 2023 via Afterlife and Interscope, five days after the Interscope partnership was reported. Genesys II followed on 29 March 2024, with remixes from Eric Prydz, Kolsch, Amelie Lens and Daniel Avery. On Genesys II he wrote lyrics for the first time, after the Berlin years of modular sounds. "At the time I wasn't even signed to any label," he notes, of the years the trilogy was built in. "I started getting into really like the songwriting a little bit in that album", he says, on the second record he put it this way.1,4

In September 2024, he was creative visual director for The Weeknd's One Night Only concert in Sao Paulo, with Alessio De Vecchi as art director. He was working on that and on his own Sphere dates simultaneously, and admits, "my whole team worked on that for like three months while we were supposed to also be working on the sphere stuff." The sound of 2023 and 2024 was melodic house and techno throughout, the tempo holding steady.1,10,4

2024 to 2025The Sphere

Anyma was announced in July 2024 as the first electronic artist to headline Sphere in Las Vegas. Afterlife presents Anyma: The End of Genesys opened 27 December 2024, with four more shows the following February and March. He says, "we didn't even know actually how many shows we would put on in the beginning." He arrived with a core team of four or five 3D and concept artists, some more than ten years with him, and a network of about ten more around the world. The resolution and file sizes of the building forced a scale up; Woodblock Animation and other studios were hired, and the production grew to between ninety and a hundred people. Some shots were cut back to keep the budget. "We had to become a film studio," he says.1,11,4,3

He described the level of it this way: "we have the problem with the grass and the leaves and we had to hire someone in Asia that was the only one could do these leaves." Some lines were cut because, as he put it, "doesn't matter if the waves are crashing against the tree or not."

He self-funded the production. His father is Francesco Milleri, chief executive of EssilorLuxottica; asked about it, he rejects the idea his father paid for his projects, and says his earnings have gone back into his art.3

The show is built in four acts, which he calls a cybernetic opera. The robot Eva falls from an orbiting station to an Earth regrown without people, and meets Adam, a human held in the roots of a tree. The story reflects his sense of ecological doom, as he puts it: "everything that could have went wrong with the human race went wrong." The idea underneath it's "a pact between humanity, technology and nature where a symbiosis is created where technology imitates nature and vice versa."4

2025Writing the end, Ibiza to Las Vegas

Hear Me Now was written with the British songwriter Magnus, one afternoon in his house in Ibiza, after a day at the beach. There was no writing camp, no session booked-"just me and him basically in my house like not in the studio," he says. On the other side of the same house, the animation work was running: "it was like a movie studio in the other side of the house." The words were written to a mockup of the closing scene, Eva becoming human. "We scored exactly what would happen on screen from the mockup animation," he says. He calls it "my first time scoring a movie basically."

"For me it's the most meaningful," he puts the song's standing this way.

The End of Genesys was announced from the Sphere stage for 23 May 2025, and released on 30 May via Interscope, with Grimes, FKA twigs, Ellie Goulding and Sevdaliza on it. Hypnotized with Ellie Goulding led the US Dance and Mix Show Airplay chart in March 2025, and he signed a global publishing deal with Kobalt the same month.1,12

2025 to 2026Giza, Coachella and AEDEN

From July 2025 he had an eight-Tuesday residency at UNVRS in Ibiza, billed as Quantum. That October saw Quantum Genesys at the Great Pyramids of Giza, with two stages. The stage built directly in front of the pyramids had no screen: "I don't want to cover the pyramids with a screen," he says, and "I had to pay for it, to do it this way," he accounts for how it was funded. Heritage criticism in the Egyptian press ran against a tourism defence from the promoter.1,13,4

The same month he co-directed the League of Legends world final opening ceremony and remixed its official song.1

AEDEN premiered at Coachella in April 2026. High winds cancelled weekend one, and he said he was heartbroken. LISA, Joji and Matt Bellamy appeared in the weekend-two set, and a London run followed at Silverworks Island in June.2,9,14

Where he is now, in his own account, is a melodic techno sound taken as far as he can take it, and going back to what he listened to before it. "I'm going to keep my roots in there, but I really going to start looking a bit broader," he says. On the risk in that: "by exciting myself I hope to excite also everybody else." And, of the direction: "I see the vision. I see where it's going. I see where it needs to be."4

Turning points

Records that matter

In their own words

• "I needed to put out some art in the world, to create"
• "I am over my style before the public even gets over it"
• "I spend 50% of my time on that and 50% on the music"
• "when I create, like I have this urge"
• "so many things can go wrong in these shows and like they did"
• "the show is the last step. It's the release of the whole process."
• "it's not my friend yet"