“If you build it, they will come.” That famously misquoted line from 1989’s Field of Dreams whispers up at me as I take in the full, monolithic size of Las Vegas’ new mega-venue, Sphere. It’s hard to imagine that anyone built this; it’s otherworldly in almost every way.
Fans from around the globe have traveled by land, sea and air for opening weekend of the U2: UV Achtung Baby Live show tonight, the most anticipated Las Vegas residency of the year. And me? I’m here to see the future.
Neo-futurism drives the architecture of Sphere, hence the sleek and ultra-modern main atrium, where scientific formulas engrave the walls like hieroglyphics of another time. Cool tones bathe the halls in Blade Runner blues and a sculpture of Gort, the humanoid robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still, can be seen at the escalators. It’s almost as if the visionaries behind Sphere knew they were designing something sublimely alien to the industry and went full-send on the theme.
I have a tough time finding my seat because I’m too busy looking up … and up … and up. The venue’s 160,000-square-foot interior display is a triumph of modern technology. Never have I seen a concert screen so winding, so towering—and that’s before the thing fully powers up. It wraps all around us, to the tips of the ceilings, even for concert goers on the balcony sections. And now I get all the fuss about the dome shape. We’re in a bubble of our own reality.
U2’s show was originally created in virtual reality as Sphere was being built. But to see these screen visuals come wholly alive, like an organic life form ready to do the Irish band’s bidding, is another story. Sphere uses the largest LED screen resolution known to man, pumping out over 200 million video pixels. An entire village of visionaries combined their talents to make the masterpiece that is U2 UV and with these screen specs, it’s unlike anything I have ever seen.
Words appear and reshape themselves around the confines of the room. Kaleidoscopic visuals adopt their own dimension and scale, wrapping around and closing in on viewers like the stargate scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The screen height can make fire rain down from the virtual heavens, or lightning and thunder in the eye of a storm. Sphere is a simulation of our wildest, most technicolor dreams.
Some of the most subtle and most jaw-dropping features were midset, when U2 took an acoustic break from Achtung Baby. At one point, the screens darkened with a dusting of stars overhead, and the venue got noticeably colder, fooling us into thinking we were outdoors on a chilly night.
And the audio, for all the challenges it faces in a dome-shaped venue, exceeded my expectations. Bono’s every quivering rasp and whisper were audible (“It cost $2 billion to hear those whispers,” he said), and they were seemingly aimed directly at me, as was the band’s water-tight musicality.
Sphere’s arrival has changed the concert landscape for me. It’s given a taste of what the future holds. And as a music lover, I’m ready for it.
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