Maddy O’Neal Will Be on a Mission at Mission Ballroom

February 28 at Mission Ballroom isn’t just any headlining date for Maddy O’Neal — it’s a checkpoint on a career climb that’s been years in the making. The Los Angeles-based producer has built her reputation on the in-between spaces of bass and funk, electronic pizzazz and psychedelic warmth, and this show feels like the clearest indication yet of how fully she’s stepping into her own dimension.

“The ultimate goal is to get to a point where you’re in control of your entire vision and you get to dream up what that ideal scenario looks like,” O’Neal says. “It’s really fun to realize that I’m in that moment, and working towards ways you cater your production to the rooms that you play in is really cool.”

That concept of shaping a show to a space rather than just dropping a set inside it has been living in her head for years, and Mission Ballroom, with its wide floor and curved architecture, has long been a must-stop for O’Neal as a music fan. “Mission Ballroom has been one of my favorite places to see shows,” she says. “It’s hard to turn that creative mode off when you go to a show. I’m always taking notes — ‘Oh, that’s a really cool thing that they did.’ It’s been really fun putting all those pieces together.”

Those notes are now becoming the blueprint. Rather than leaning on the maximalist LED walls that dominate so many electronic productions at Mission Ballroom, O’Neal is taking a subtler approach, one rooted in atmosphere. “We wanted to give an organic vibe in the mix of having an LED screen with visuals that I’m super pumped on,” she explains. “We wanted to use the space and make it feel more alive using organic elements. That was the dichotomy we were focused on. It is a subtle way of making it feel warm without shoving a bunch of visuals in your face.”

Her guiding principle? “Let’s just play with light and shadow for all the different moments.”

That philosophy extends beyond lighting into the arc of the night itself, since O’Neal wasn’t looking for a predictable bass-music stack of artists with matching tempos and textures. “I didn’t want to put out a bill that’s predictable, or seemed like it made sense,” she says. “I wanted to do something different and shake things up.” 

So instead, she’s curating a lineup that moves deliberately across sonic lanes. Tokimonsta provides an ethereal bass sound that derives from progressive blends of techno and house, and Mary Droppinz adds an element of experimental UKG that blends and fuses a lot of different subgenres within dubstep.

 “It’s a journey between different genres between bass music and electronic music from the start to the end of the night,” O’Neal says. “The scene in Denver can be a little cliquey. They find the artists that they like and they stick to that. I thought that if you put a lineup that’s surprising to people, you would be introducing them to different lanes that they might not have been exposed to before.”

That instinct to bridge scenes rather than bunker inside one mirrors O’Neal’s own career path. Her sound has always resisted easy categorization, pulling from hip-hop grooves, glitchy textured basslines and melodic songwriting without settling into a single category. That’s part of what’s earned her a loyal following in Colorado, where she’s spent years grinding through club sets and late-night supporting slots at different venues.

“I’ve had this slow climb, and being in the Colorado community has been a huge part of my project,” she says. “It feels like this massive homecoming reunion moment where it’s very nostalgic to think about my climb and my journey and how I got here.”

That nostalgia is baked into the emotional core of the show. For O’Neal, it’s about honoring the people who stuck around before she reached certain milestones. “People who are going to be there are the people who believed in me before I believed in myself,” she says. “It’s this giving back moment in sharing this whole experience, and I hope I’m inspiring other people watching my journey of how I got there.”

Even the structure of her set reflects that intention. O’Neal has created a new opening sequence specifically for Mission Ballroom, building the night from a place of drama and anticipation. “I wrote a brand-new intro for the show with all these dramatic moments,” she notes.

Still, for all the thought going into visuals and pacing, O’Neal is careful not to let spectacle overpower sensation. “Visuals are so overwhelming,” she explains. “You want people to still be in their bodies with this push and pull of energy without forcing them to stare at something.”

That’s a reminder that her shows, at their core, are about internal and external movement. The balance between immersion and awareness, between digital glow and human awareness, has become one of her defining signatures in her sets. “I’m really pushing myself as much as I can to make the best show possible for those people and for the community that I love so much,” she says.

Maddy O’Neal isn’t just showing up with a USB stick and expensive production, she’s crafting a narrative complemented by an experience that will be drenched in beauty. A night designed not only to sound good, but to honor the community that’s supported her throughout her career.

February 28 will be a moment when the long arc of O’Neal’s career reaches a room big enough to hold it. A space where genres can blur, and where an artist gets to look out over a crowd that helped carry her there — and say thank you with amazing sound and a fully conceptualized vision.

Maddy O’Neal, TOKiMONSTA, Mary Droppinz, Neumonic and Smores, 6:30 p.m. Saturday, February 28, Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop Street; get tickets here.