Contemplative jam at L.A. Decom 2012
Thank you LA Decom friends!
We had an awesome time meeting you all and hearing you play! We’ll have some photos and video up shortly. Meantime, come find us on Facebook!
Photos from Caine’s Arcade Day of Play
Fun at Caine’s Arcade – The Cardboard Challenge Day of Play
XyloVan was thrilled and tickled to be invited to join hundreds of kids (and grownups indulging their inner children) at the Caine’s Arcade Cardboard Challenge DAY OF PLAY. Kids in Boyle Heights (and at Cardboard Challenge events all over the world) built wild, amazing toys, games and masks out of cardboard, tape and a little …
Burning Man 2012 – Whoa, what was THAT all about?
We left the playa 8 days ago. We’re still trying to figure out this exhilarating, \ exhausting, just-got-mugged-in-a-brothel feeling. Our 9th burn – the 6th for our two kids – started out wild. Then it grew wacky, turned mostly wonderful – and then veered toward the horribly woeful and deeply weird. In the end, 2012 …
Burning Man 2012: Burn Wall Street – and torch that Egyptian god while you’re at it
At some point – say, \next year – we’ll probably quit aiming a camera at the same damn spectacle that everyone else is videoing and actually absorb a burn face-to-face with open soul, unfiltered by a 2-inch screen. Until then, we’re happy to share these videos of Burn Wall Street and the Anubis burn: Word …
Mutant Vehicle of the Year Award for Burning Man 2012
XyloVan loves meeting fellow mutant vehicles. On Tuesday night, we stumbled across “Fusion,” a fantastic V8-powered desert roadster hand-wrought entirely of stainless-steel tubing, laboratory reactor vessels, LED arrays and raw badassery. We can’t find much on the web about it – no build log, a few photos on Facebook, but it appears to be tied …
Contemplative Laura
Laura – a multiinstrumentalist who dropped by to discuss XyloVan mallet technology found a mood:
Thursday night jam
Mikaal, Hunter and a friend get into a groove in Swing City:
The Walking Beast
It’s been around for a while, troche but this is the first time we got to see it up close and in action. Biomass is completely obsessed with it, of course. Fire good. Mammoth earth-shaking alien-looking tank technology gooder. Here’s a clip of it showing off on the Esplanade at Burning Man 2012 – watch …
The Saucers
Our Burning Man project for this year took so much time to build that we haven’t been able to scrape together a full build log for it. But watch this space – we’ll share some pictures of how we spun plastic plates from the 99-cent store, a handful of Chinese-made LEDs and four old backpack …
We’re headed to Swing City!
We’re tickled as hell to share this news: XyloVan just learned that we will be joining Swing City in Black Rock City this August at Burning Man 2012. Swing City is dedicated to aerial gymnastics – and the XyloVan crew is about as buff as a plate of doughnuts. But we’re as likely to monkey …
Photos from Lucidity Festival 2012 – Sparks of joy
Lucidity Festival brought a lot of joy to XyloVan. Here’s what some of that looked like. If you spot yourself in any of these photos, give us a shout in comments – we want to hear from you – and thanks for playing!
Rocking the mallets at Lucidity Festival 2012
Everyone brings something glowing and unique to XyloVan. Little kids, drunks and professional percussionists hammer at the keys in a zillion different ways. People play “Chopsticks” or “Star Wars” or “Mario Bros.” or “Claire du Lune.” They goof, explore and jam. Their music is as diverse as their faces and lives. But the beauty of …
Raoul’s lucid dream
I kind of want to dedicate this set of dispatches from Lucidity Fest 2012 to Raoul, a little, sparkly-eyed older Mexican fellow who strolled up at like 2 a.m. Sunday and reminded me of the power of transformative encounters with new music. He had never seen anything like XyloVan. He kept saying, “This is … …
Chill time
Had a little party on the van’s roof deck with Marty (left) and Crystal (right) listening to Nick down below playing keys in an impromptu jam with whoever that is on stage. Calm, still, reflective and in the end quite revelatory. This is the atmosphere for lucid dreaming.
The hood trio
These three had a fantastic time hammering away on Keyboard #4 and bending it to their will. The gentleman on the right with the flashlight seems to want to help …
A little night music
This is the scene around XyloVan on Friday night at #LucidityFest. I love watching the interplay, ampoule the solo raving and overall free improvisation – and then moments of careful coordination – that occur with the random comings and goings of a festival – and particularly with this unique mix of …
Lucidity Festival 2012 – All about inner light
Now that was a hell of a thing. XyloVan is all packed away and my ears are still ringing with the music you all made together – with us and throughout Lucidity Festival 2012. There are plenty more photos and video where this came from (and still to come) but I’m too shagged (and back-to-work!) …