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 impartial, large-scale music festivals thriving amongst right now’s corporatized live performance panorama. Heralded as one of many leading immersive art experiences throughout the U.S. competition market due to Spirit Lake, this yr’s occasion provided its most strong programming to this point with over 20 installations.
The competition was brimming with proficient sculptors, fireplace staff, painters, thespians and lighting designers as attendees reveled in lakefront projection mapping, bought hypnotized with gentle exhibits 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, stated in a recent interview with EDM.com. “Not solely has the Spirit Lake manufacturing space continued to develop over time, however the intricacies of the art work, 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 surroundings that it’s right now. I personally discover the Spirit Lake artists’ use of pure parts to be a real a part of its attraction.”
Hulaween continues to be emblematic of what makes a competition distinctive, cultivating an ineffable area for inventive expression, interconnectedness and true magic. To rejoice its persevering status as a pioneering competition 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 characterize the non secular core of Hulaween all through its decade-long historical past.
By means of 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 shaped via 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 figuring out what to anticipate, John Summit’s performances over the weekend had attendees on their knees as he performed via practically each style of digital music. From his basic 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 choice of Spirit Lake lit up at evening as interactive, bioluminescent mushrooms grew on the aspect of choose timber. 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 parts 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—normally seen onstage along with his reside band—modified it up and handled us to a DJ set whereby the R&B and home music virtuoso cycled via his kaleidoscopic arsenal of disco and remixes of basic pop anthems.
Fairly Lights – Chatterpillars
After we open our hearts and our minds, there isn’t a restrict to what we are able to 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 revolutionary sound and ethos of collaboration and neighborhood, Fairly Lights reminds us what’s potential via 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 vitality to her Hulaween set with flaming deep dub connecting the gang.
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 vitality to the Amp. With the theme of togetherness at its core, their beautiful reside set collided professional mixing with distinctive sound design.
Pigeons Taking part in Ping Pong – Fowl Home Village
Produced from upcycled and domestically harvested pure supplies, the Fowl Home Village confirmed us there’s at all times greater than meets the attention—and to by no means underestimate how issues can come collectively in an ideal method to create one thing particular.
Pigeons Taking part in Ping Pong united quite a lot 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 vitality to encourage and join.
Try a photograph gallery of the tenth annual Hulaween beneath, courtesy of the competition’s press staff.