Some people dream of being creators and others find a way to make outlets for their creations. AL1CE, from Los Angeles, do both with an entrepreneurial, Burning Man kind of spirit: They’re a mobile encampment of lights, sound and spectacle.

Originally conceived as an additional musical outlet for Gordon Bash, Tash Cox and Scott Landes, — members of the band Mankind is Obsolete — the founding AL1CE trio wanted to bring their love for new wave and electronic music to life. A collaboration with Sypher Arts Studios, an artist collective that puts on the massive Labyrinth Masquerade Ball in Los Angeles, helped to crystallize their vision.

“This collaboration would set the foundation for AL1CE to become the musical part of an immersive show,” they explain in their bio. Over time the trio added Sasha Travis, Steve Kefalas, Jesse DeSanto and Nathan Trowbridge.

AL1CE

Travis, with a background of filmmaking and theater, became director of a novel project: new music videos to be released every full moon for 14 months. The clips that dropped with every turn of the lunar cycle in a stretch of 2017-2018 were dubbed “Moondrops,” and the songs were then collectively released as “The Thirteenth Hour,” the album the band is currently supporting on tour. The music and videos were in turn the basis for a feature length film of surrealist horror with elements of sci-fi, “The Thirteenth Hour Anthology,” weaving the “Moondrop” videos into a story.

Besides the impressive feats of multi-media creation and nonstop touring, the group serves as cultural envoys in exchange programs sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. This work has taken AL1CE as far afield as Central Asia, Eastern Europe and North Africa.

Back home, they continue their global domination by other means with forays including the Anime Expo in Los Angeles, a regular summer gig of theirs every year since 2015 in front of thousands of rabid, cosplaying, Japan-obsessed fans.

If their hustle and sleepless opportunity-seeking are any guide, AL1CE will be producing their own festivals soon enough, and we’ll all be following them through the looking glass into another world. See them while they’re still visible up close!

AL1CE play 9pm Thursday October 10 with Obsidian, The Covenne and DJ Paul KloV at Respectable Street in West Palm Beach. ilikealice.com ~ Tim Moffatt