For the past two years, Anyma has told a story that transcends sound — and the boundaries of visual performance in electronic music and beyond. 

With his trilogy of Genesys albums, the producer has chronicled the progression of a humanoid named Eva from artificial consciousness to sentience. Through that album series and its cutting-edge live show (which sold out all six of its initial dates at Las Vegas' Sphere in just 24 hours), he’s scripted a journey of his own: one defined by audacious artistic ambition, technological innovation and creative strategy that defies convention. With The End of Genesys, Anyma draws Eva’s and his other characters’ storylines to a close (for now, at least), bringing his narrative arc to a crescendo.

Out May 30, The End of Genesys is the final installment in the melodic techno triptych, which began with Anyma’s 2023 debut album, Genesys. Anyma’s philosophical inquiry into what it means to be human swelled to life at the Sphere last December during the final shows of the  End of Genesys residency, where Anyma became the first dance/electronic act to play the Las Vegas venue.

"Sonically and visually, I think [Genesys] reached a point where it cannot be done better within the genre I'm working with," the Italian visionary told GRAMMY.com. "[The album] kind of reached the pinnacle of what I wanted to do. I wrote songs with all my favorite artists and worked with many producers I respect…I think it's the first step into the real music industry for me, and it excites me for the future."

This statement carries weight for the producer born Matteo Milleri, who has worked in the music industry for more than a decade but only recently struck out on his own. Prior to launching Anyma in 2021, Milleri co-founded the melodic techno duo Tale of Us in 2008 alongside Carmine Conti (MRAK). Together, they established Afterlife, an enduring label and event series similarly invested in immersive storytelling.

This groundwork laid the foundation for the Anyma project and will continue to empower its next era. After serving as the Visual Creative Director of The Weeknd’s One-Night-Only concert in Brazil last September and inking a global publishing deal with Kobalt Music Group in March, it’s clear Milleri is on the precipice of another creative metamorphosis. His sonic evolution on the last LP of the Genesys series confirms it. From its edgier sounds to its cross-genre collaborations, including Ellie Goulding and 070 Shake, The End of Genesys signals that the audiovisual virtuoso already has his sights set on what’s next.

Ahead of the album’s arrival via Interscope Records, Anyma spoke with GRAMMY.com about why ending this chapter was not only necessary but "liberating."

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What inspired you to structure the Sphere show into four distinct acts, with each exploring different eras and themes?

I needed to make order in my head because… I did not really visually represent the story in a timeline. The first two visuals start out with an [artificial general intelligence] robot named Eva, who has an awakening. She feels trapped and is looking out through this glass, inviting you to connect with her on a human level. She breaks the glass, and that’s the first scene. The second act, Humana, is about collaborating with real people and exploring themes of transhumanism. 

The third act, The End of Genesys, is meant to represent the potential destructive power of technology. It leaves things open-ended, which is where the final act, Quantum, begins. We introduce a new quantum being, a lost traveler who eventually is revealed to have my form. He discovers Eva, who is still searching for answers and self-connection, and as the two characters connect, Eva begins to take human form. 

The stage where I was performing looked like a quantum computer, making it seem like I was controlling the narrative from beginning to end…I got really into quantum computing and quantum physics in the last year, and I was very inspired. The possibilities to evolve the story and alternative realities are so endless that, in the end, it was like an open ending, and something for the future.

How did the opportunity to become the first dance/electronic act to perform at the Sphere come about? 

I first saw the Sphere on social media and immediately told my agent, We need to go there. After visiting a smaller version in Burbank, I was sold. I called him the next day and said, Make it happen. Fifteen months later, in July 2024, we announced the first shows. Between the visual world-building I had already done and the scale of my shows, I think I had a strong case for being a fit. I knew I could truly maximize what the venue offers.

Given the Genesys series’ cultural resonance and success, closing this chapter must have been quite the task, and considering the Sphere residency allowed you to expand this narrative beyond what was possible in previous performances and through the albums, it had to have felt really good to tell the story the way you always intended to right before The End of Genesys.

When I started the project, I always wanted to tell a very immersive visual and musical story and have the audience’s attention, almost like you're in a cinema. It was always challenging because, apart from technical and financial challenges outside of Sphere, where to produce the kind of content I need, it’s a bit like doing a CGI animated movie. It's tens of millions of dollars, and as a touring artist, you can’t really afford this, just for visuals. 

So, we had to make little scenes, just the most important moments, to show the intentions of the characters. With the Sphere, the potential of the whole lore was completely unlocked. I could really go in and tell the story through a new lens. It changed how I perceive and feel media in general. It was very exciting to be able to do that and push the boundaries of what's possible to experience. 

What do you mean when you say it changed how you perceive and feel media?

I always long for feeling more from art, and by that, I mean stimulating the brain and the mind and the senses, so your feelings are moved. That's the purpose of art in general, I guess. And the Sphere is quite exactly that because you are completely lost in this environment where you don't see it as a screen anymore; it's more like a VR headset without the problems of the VR, like being isolated and alone, or the heaviness of the headset. 

I went to rehearsal like six months before the show. We tested the first visual in the Sphere, The End of Genesys intro, with the robot breaking the glass. I had previously seen it in the [VR] headset, and I really felt it strongly, but I wasn't prepared for what was going to happen when I saw it with the sound system on in the actual space. I personally felt from that rehearsal something I hadn't felt before from mixed media. 

I feel like it also resonated with the crowd. I saw from the reactions and the comments online that people were saying things like, I've never seen anything like it, like, it's changing forever how things are going to be experienced. That was the whole purpose of the project. And my initial idea was to do it for extended reality; the Sphere didn't even exist when I started it. The fact that this building made it possible sooner than I expected is very exciting and looks good for the future of what humans can do to push this boundary.

What does The End of Genesys represent to you conceptually? Is it a conclusion, a transformation or something else entirely?

The End of Genesys is indeed the conclusion of the Genesys trilogy. It's basically the story of this AI being Eva and this humanoid Adam, so it has its own sense of purpose to start and end as a lore. But as a show, it is indeed transformative and progressing into something else.

As an artist, I always like to start and end concepts, but usually, the end of one concept is also the beginning of another. So, for example, at the Sphere show, the different acts represented what the end of Genesys meant as a timeline. Genesys as the first act, Humana as the second act, and The End of Genesys as the third act completed the story, both musically and visually, hence the album. The Quantum act hints at the future and where I'm going, let’s say.

What felt most important to you as you prepared to end Genesys?

What's most exciting about ending Genesys is the fact that, both sonically and visually, I think it reached a point where it cannot be done better within the genre I'm working with — melodic techno. It also said what it had to say, in my opinion. So, I'm happy to close this chapter with this album and say this was this moment in time, captured from the beginning to the end, and look where I can go after this and not get stuck in my own concept because of touring needs.  

[The End of Genesys] was also a way to say I won't tour this anymore, because DJing and touring as a live artist never stops. There is no album phase where you tour and then you stop for two years, like other artists. So, I felt the necessity, and it just felt right to finish it. It also feels very exciting in a sense to say it out loud for me. Liberating.

Between its sound and collaborators, this album feels like a bold creative step. How would you describe the way your sound evolved on The End of Genesys?

It goes straighter to the point, from a songwriting perspective. The songs were written for the show or for the album — some didn't make it to the show — so it wasn't like, Let's get the topline from publishing and just write music to it, which is what you would usually do. 

With my friends and my collaborators, we wrote songs from scratch. We produced them to what I think is the highest level of what can be done with this kind of music. It was more of a communal music writing effort than the first two albums. So, I think it's the first step into the real music industry for me, and it excites me for the future.

What else are you excited for, and how does it relate to where you’re going to go in this post-Genesys era?

I'm excited to now explore the visual side of things more. I'm excited to build an even bigger team and take on bigger projects, which I will be announcing soon, not unlike the one I did for The Weeknd. Pushing visually what can be done both with 3D-CGI and also with AI…is definitely something that's exciting me in the visual field. I think we are now close to starting to get some really good results that are artistically relevant. I didn't use it at all until now because it was a bit too simple, in my opinion. It couldn't really express the details I wanted to express visually, but we’re diving into that more now, and I'm very excited about what can be done. I tried some of the new models recently, and you will see some AI visuals soon. They won't feel like what you've seen before. 

Musically, I'm going to go into two directions at the same time because I have my techno underground alter ego that wants to explore and innovate within dance music but does not necessarily have a commercial purpose. In the last two years, being so concentrated on my records, I worked less on that. 

On the other hand, on the more pop-leaning indie side of things, I'm excited to improve my songwriting skills and really take that stuff to the next level and collaborate even more with bigger artists.

I'd imagine your new residency at [UNVRS] in Ibiza is going to play a big role.

The residency is going to be quite interesting because we are not trying to beat the Sphere residency in any way. It's a big club; it's a beautiful club. It is going to be very stenographic. I'm going to go back a bit to the production, visuals, and music interacting with each other in a more theatrical way. 

Most importantly, it's going to be fun. It is going to be a bit more transformative in the sense that things are going to happen, not when you expect them. I'm going to try to catch the audience by surprise and not have them expect a visual moment at a certain moment or a drop in another moment. I think people are now ready to experience it without judging too much. I think that part is over, and I feel a bit more free to just do what I think is right for this part of my career. 

You’ve been able to break through the traditional dance/electronic bubble, drawing in audiences who aren’t fans of the genre but are intrigued by your world-building and visual storytelling. Has the crossover reception surprised you?

It surprised me very much. I always longed for a bigger exposure of my music, and I didn't really want to change the music too much. So, in a selfish way, I decided to find a different approach to empower it. And that was the whole purpose of Anyma — not necessarily just visuals. My first instinct was, how do we do more than just music videos to promote songs? Some of my favorite artists, like FKA Twigs and Grimes, used music videos to push a sound that was maybe less obvious for the radio initially, and then it took traction from the visual part of it.

I felt like you can make credible, sick records and by creating a universe around them and putting visuals to it, you can reach a bigger audience and generally make the record shine more. With electronic music, it was challenging because in the beginning, I didn’t have many vocals, and it was always like, okay, What kind of music video can you do? What kind of mediums can I use? In the end, these digital art short clips really resonated with me when I matched them with these cinematic sonics. I would almost argue that the non-vocal songs and audiovisuals were the ones that reached a wider audience than the pop songs. 

It was very surprising when the "Syren" song and visuals started going completely viral online because that's a weird song; you would never expect everybody in the world to know it or resonate with it…it's for a warehouse in Berlin at best. I'm glad to be pushing the genre forward for me and for everybody else.

I think we can expect to see more artists emulate your approach because of how pervasive, visible, and effective it’s been. Of your Sphere residency, you said you're "most proud knowing we're finally touching the future of live experiences." What does that future look like to you within the dance/electronic space specifically?

I feel like it's already happening, like what you said. There are people who are emulating what I've done. But I think most of the things I've seen were very exciting because it didn't feel like a copy of my visual narrative, but more like a similar approach and an empowerment of their personas. I think when these things really make experiences better, ultimately for the performer and the audience, is when your idea can be expressed 360 from the production level. And in that case, you have to become not just a DJ, but a director, an artist, a videographer. 

I think true artistry will rise because people want to feel, see, and hear exciting things these days. The common, normal tricks don't work anymore on crowds in general, across all genres. Some rules are being broken right now, and I feel like what I've done is open the door for artists to find more ways to express themselves.