Suwannee Hulaween celebrated its 10-year anniversary over Halloween weekend, welcoming 20,000 followers again to its residence at Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in Stay Oak, Florida.
Hulaween stands as one of many final really unbiased, large-scale music festivals thriving amongst at present’s corporatized live performance panorama. Heralded as one of many main immersive artwork experiences throughout the U.S. pageant market due to Spirit Lake, this yr’s occasion provided its most strong programming to this point with over 20 installations.
The pageant was brimming with gifted sculptors, fireplace staff, painters, thespians and lighting designers as attendees reveled in lakefront projection mapping, obtained hypnotized with gentle reveals and misplaced themselves within the huge array of interactive installations.
“The evolution of this occasion has been inspiring to witness,” Jasper Mosher, who runs the projection-mapping firm The Electrical Dream Machine and works onsite at Hulaween, mentioned in a current interview with EDM.com. “Not solely has the Spirit Lake manufacturing space continued to develop over time, however the intricacies of the paintings, inventive depth and the neighborhood of creators has developed by leaps and bounds. Fortunately, Spirit Lake has managed to retain the unique persona from its youth whereas blossoming into the inventive behemoth of an immersive atmosphere that it’s at present. I personally discover the Spirit Lake artists’ use of pure components to be a real a part of its appeal.”
Hulaween continues to be emblematic of what makes a pageant distinctive, cultivating an ineffable area for inventive expression, interconnectedness and true magic. To have a good time its persevering popularity as a pioneering pageant on the intersection of music and artwork, we in contrast 10 artists to the general feeling evoked by its numerous immersive artwork installations in 2023.
The String Cheese Incident – Spero Totems
Futuristic archetypes exist inside all of us—morsels from previous lives, love and new experiences ready to be unearthed and explored. The String Cheese Incident undeniably symbolize the non secular core of Hulaween all through its decade-long historical past.
By every of the band’s six units over the weekend, Hulaween’s tenth anniversary celebrating its Full Moon Household Reunion relayed extra than simply music to followers. Identical to the six pillars of the Spero Totems, all six members of The String Cheese Incident cultivated an area to discover the internal world that lives inside every of us with child-like awe.
Elderbrook – Cosmic Portal
Step into the Cosmic Portal, the place we embark on a journey of transformation by exploring the dichotomy of sunshine and darkish inside nature.
Mixing his natural and uncooked vocals with digital manufacturing, Elderbrook provided a sanctuary the place dance music naturally fashioned by his emotive and grounding soundscapes. Simply as you began to settle into your ethereal trance, the famend producer and singer-songwriter introduced again the beat to rediscover the wonders of vibrational music.
John Summit – Mural Maze
Having originated on the debut Hulaween in 2013, the Mural Maze sprawled throughout 15,000 sq. ft and offered an immersive expertise.
Simply as you’ll flip a nook of the mural maze not realizing what to anticipate, John Summit’s performances over the weekend had attendees on their knees as he performed by practically each style of digital music. From his traditional home and techno takes to the shock flashes of dubstep and drum & bass, Summit was a musical maze to be reckoned with.
MZG b2b Manic Focus – Bioshrooms
A number of Spirit Lake lit up at night time as interactive, bioluminescent mushrooms grew on the aspect of choose bushes. Whereas Hulaween veterans MZG and Manic Focus each performed their very own units, collectively they summoned fairly the sonic journey for followers at their b2b set on the Incendia Stage.
Identical to naturally-occurring mushrooms in nature, the b2b efficiency noticed the producers at their finest collectively, delivering a trippy and one-of-a-kind expertise for attendees.
Channel Tres – Alebrijes
Thought-about ambassadors of Mexico overseas, the monumental Alebrijes are created by mixing pictorial and sculptural components of latest artwork by the artist Emanuel Zarate Ortiz. These breathtaking installations are supposed to honor tales of conventional Mexican storytelling and encourage spiritually expansive messages to the Hulaween attendees.
Channel Tres—often seen onstage together with his stay band—modified it up and handled us to a DJ set whereby the R&B and home music virtuoso cycled by his kaleidoscopic arsenal of disco and remixes of traditional pop anthems.
Fairly Lights – Chatterpillars
After we open our hearts and our minds, there is no such thing as a restrict to what we will do. The ability of human connection cannot be understated, and the 2 units from Fairly Lights over Hulaween weekend proved that to be true.
Together with his progressive sound and ethos of collaboration and neighborhood, Fairly Lights reminds us what’s attainable by innate human creativity, simply because the Chatterpillars set up centered our intentions across the powers of communication.
Khiva – Fleeble Flobbler
Fiery, wild and raunchy, the Fleeble Flobbler brings silliness and open-heartedness to the entrance of the thoughts whereas pushing us out of our consolation zones and connecting us with each other. Khiva introduced a daring, glowing and heat power to her Hulaween set with flaming deep dub connecting the group.
Giolì & Assia – The Spider
A middle of gravity inside Spirit Lake, the Spider introduced us into shut quarters to make reminiscences, simply as Giolì & Assia introduced uplifting and collaborative power to the Amp. With the theme of togetherness at its core, their gorgeous stay set collided professional mixing with distinctive sound design.
Pigeons Taking part in Ping Pong – Chook Home Village
Made out of upcycled and domestically harvested pure supplies, the Chook Home Village confirmed us there’s all the time greater than meets the attention—and to by no means underestimate how issues can come collectively in an ideal approach to create one thing particular.
Pigeons Taking part in Ping Pong united a wide range of sounds, devices and vibes to weave particular moments collectively in a curious and distinctive method of their particular “Daft Facet Of The Moon” set, which noticed the four-piece psychedelic funk band play their tackle Daft Punk and Pink Floyd classics.
Lab Group – Misplaced Lighthouse
Identical to the Misplaced Lighthouse acted as a beacon of radiant gentle to information the trail, in addition to a gathering place for many who aren’t afraid to wander, Lab Group offered a glowing shimmer of highly effective power to encourage and join.
Take a look at a photograph gallery of the tenth annual Hulaween under, courtesy of the pageant’s press group.