 like a giant record turntable, while the building around them pulsed and vibrated, shimmered and shapeshifted with the music. One moment it was as if we were all standing in the very centre of Las Vegas with the city apparently towering around us, the next we were in a desert with stars blinking overhead. Giant insects fluttered about, a Biblical flood threatened to engulf us. During a particularly discombobulating version of The Fly, the whole space turned into a whirlwind of digital numbers only for the ceiling to apparently descend as if it was going to crush us all beneath it. Honestly, in the wrong hands, this technology could be quite nauseating. But U2 are past m){kind=link}
The group opened Las Vegas’s $2.4 billion high-tech venue with a show so utterly extraordinary it almost overwhelmed the band themselves
Are you ready to have your mind blown? On Friday night in Las Vegas, U2 inaugurated the new state-of-the-art Sphere venue with a concert that sets a new bar for live entertainment. Launching a 25-show residency in a $2.4 billion, 18,000 capacity super high-tech dome, the Irish rock band delivered a genuinely astonishing set. Imagine the best visuals and sound you have ever seen and heard, toss it up with some CGI world building that makes Avatar look quaint, throw in some brain-scrambling illusions that would bedazzle David Copperfield then blast it all out with the fourth-wall smashing passion that has driven the Irish rock band since their punky origins. It was utterly extraordinary. So much so, indeed, that at times it seemed in danger of overwhelming the band themselves.
Back in the early Nineties, U2 effectively reinvented the rock show with multimedia extravaganza Zoo TV, and now they are threatening to do it all over again with a new show based on the same album, 1991’s Achtung Baby. The Sphere show was originally conceived as a 40th anniversary celebration before Covid and assorted technical problems slowed things down. But while this party might have started a couple of years late, it still felt ahead of its time.
The band performed extremely up close on a sparse stage designed (by Brian Eno) like a giant record turntable, while the building around them pulsed and vibrated, shimmered and shapeshifted with the music. One moment it was as if we were all standing in the very centre of Las Vegas with the city apparently towering around us, the next we were in a desert with stars blinking overhead. Giant insects fluttered about, a Biblical flood threatened to engulf us. During a particularly discombobulating version of The Fly, the whole space turned into a whirlwind of digital numbers only for the ceiling to apparently descend as if it was going to crush us all beneath it.
Honestly, in the wrong hands, this technology could be quite nauseating. But U2 are past masters when it comes to the emotional dynamics of a show. Throughout their career, they have sought to deliver intimacy at scale, and they used the potential of this almost science fictional space with a surprising degree of restraint. The focus (for the most part) remained very much on the band on a surprisingly spartan stage, with nothing between them and the audience. They may have been high-definition on the vast screen, but they were also right there in the flesh.