lmost four years to the day, REZZ made her (to me personally, at least) triumphant return to Minneapolis’ premier events venue, the Armory. Events of the world aside, I had been looking forward to this tour announcement for a very long time. REZZ’s set back in 2022 was a turning point for me as both an artist and a photographer. Her Spiral tour was the first time I had attended a large-scale live music production where the intentional juxtaposition of front-of-house art design and performer elevated each individual element.

The lighting design by Bending Lite Productions, combined with REZZ’s unique infernal spin on downtempo music, created a show that was greater than the sum of its parts. Not only was the live music phenomenal, but it also gave me a sense of direction and vision for how and where I wanted to take my photography. It inspired the types of shows I most wanted to seek out and cover, and to this day, it remains one of my favorite concert experiences.

Fast forward to 2026, and the Portal tour rolled into town. This time, it was even better than before. REZZ dropped “As the Pendulum Swings” back in September 2025, and its vortex motif became the primary design cue for the visuals and lighting. An abundance of spirals, vortexes, and circles amplified the hypnotic stylings of REZZ’s new material.

Enormous bursts of flame punctuated the pulsing blasts of the massive circular lighting rig—an 80-foot-tall behemoth of panels, a circular LED screen, and carefully positioned strobes. Throughout the night, the lights angled themselves to create a massive spiral across the chasm of the Armory’s interior, then converged in the center to form an overwhelmingly bright spiral strobe effect floating midair. It was exactly as incredible to experience as it sounds—elevated further by REZZ’s trademark spiral glasses, an unsettling north star grounding the deliberate bombast in a nightmarish reality.

Enough cannot be said about how great this live show is. There’s the excess of Excision or other traditional more-is-better show packages, where there are more lasers than attendees. But there’s something indescribably magical that happens when transportive music like REZZ’s is married to an artistic, consistent theme and an incredible front-of-house staff.

It goes well beyond simply attending a concert and experiencing live music—it becomes something uniquely memorable. For lack of a less elitist term, it becomes a unique expression of art that you really cannot get elsewhere in life.