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French collective Cercle is known for producing musical performances in awe-inspiring locales around the globe: French DJ and producer Sébastien Léger played in front of the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Ben Böhmer spun a DJ set from a hot air balloon as it flew over Cappadocia in Turkey and Mochakk performed at the bustling Plaza de España in Sevilla, Spain, and electronic duo Bob Moses playing in front of the Griffith Observatory.
Now the company has taken on its most ambitious project yet — and it’s bringing L.A. audiences along for the ride. Cercle Odyssey, landing at the Los Angeles Convention Center today, is billed as the world’s first 360-degree nomadic concert series. Imagine the visual explosion of the Sphere in Las Vegas with the intimacy of a Boiler Room set, all inside a cube-shaped structure. The L.A. shows — featuring performances by Paul Kalkbrenner, Empire of the Sun, Moby, the Blaze and Black Coffee — incorporate immersive 8K projections, spatial soundscapes, an electric light show and other multisensory components. Each event is capped at 5,000 guests and no phones are allowed (more on that below). Want to check it out? Here are five things to know.
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1. The visuals aren’t just spectacular. They tell a story.
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While one could easily mistake the otherworldly visuals featured in the show for AI, all of it was actually shot with a 360 drone camera in various locations around the world.
Cercle founder and creative director Derek Barbolla teamed up with Neels Castillon, a film director who bridges storytelling and the human connection to nature, to direct and shoot an art film loosely inspired by Homer’s “Odyssey.” For the film, Castillon traveled to hard-to-reach sites including the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, the Namib Desert in Namibia and Salar de Uyun (the world’s largest salt flat) in Bolivia, and formed a narrative surrounding four characters who embark on a journey that takes them through four elements: ice, the ocean, the forest and the desert.
The story was designed to be nonlinear, so it can be chopped and edited, and each performance can be different. Some headliners like Moby were particularly hands-on in curating visuals for their shows, while others collaborated with Cercle to curate their visual set.
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2. The show electrifies your senses — and the sound is cutting-edge
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To create an enveloping experience, Cercle Odyssey taps into your senses, including smell via a machine that sprays handcrafted fragrances to match the scenery and music. But one element that remains a priority for Barbolla is the sound, of course.
For Cercle Odyssey, he tapped in with L-Acoustics to use their cutting-edge L-ISA immersive sound technology, which features more than 15 speakers above and around the stage and subwoofer arrays, all of which help make the sound powerful and crisp. The technology not only elevates the music you’re hearing, but it also makes the natural sounds such as birds chirping and ocean waves — which Castillon recorded during his travels — sound real.
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3. Sorry, no phones allowed
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Upon arrival, guests are instructed to put their phones into a secure pouch. The reason? So concertgoers can stay in the moment and truly immerse themselves in the experience, which can’t be done with a small screen in your hand, Barbolla says.
But if you’re still concerned about not having a physical memory from the show to rewatch later or post on social media, Cercle sends video footage from each of the shows to attendees afterward. In fact, some of the footage they share is shot on iPhones to create the authentic experience of being in the audience.
However, if you need to access your phone for an emergency, you can go to one of two areas on each side of the venue.
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4. L.A. is the only U.S. tour stop so far — and that’s intentional
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Shortly after he launched Cercle in France in 2016, Barbolla planned to start a chapter in L.A. as well. To do this, he reached out to a few of his friends who were studying in Santa Barbara, brought them the necessary film equipment and taught them how to produce live stream shows for the company. But in the end, his idea was “too ambitious” at the time, he says, and Barbolla abandoned the idea.
He went on to host a handful of shows in L.A. including Bob Moses’ set at the Griffith Observatory during the pandemic, but he’s always wanted to host more events in the city, he says. So bringing Cercle Odyssey to L.A. was an obvious choice.
“It’s kind of a dream because the music industry in L.A. is one of the biggest cultural landmarks, but also the cinema industry,” he says, “so it was meant to be.”
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5. The shows are meant to be a more sustainable and accessible way for fans to experience a Cercle production
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While Cercle’s in-person shows over the years have required fans to get on an airplane and travel to historical and remote destinations such as the Sisteron Citadel in France, Barbolla wanted Cercle Odyssey to be more accessible to fans. “We wanted to bring nature to the city,” he says.
It was also a goal for Barbolla to make the massive production as sustainable as possible, so he he used projected screens instead of lead screens. That way his team only has to travel with the custom-made canvas they use for the projections, which “is very small” and can be folded up. For everything else, the Cercle team rents the sound, light and camera equipment and hires local crews to work in each city, making the project more economical and ecological.
For now, the Cercle Odyssey tour, which kicked off in Mexico City last month, will wrap in Paris on June 1, but Barbolla says he wants to expand it and bring it to more cities in the near future. It’s also a dream of his to give the art installation he created to other creators and artists, so they can add their interpretation to it as well.
“The possibilities are infinite,” he says. “We [maybe] explored 1% of what we could do in this room.”
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