XAVII LAIN
熙維聯
JELLE WARENDORFF

'Do what you do, wherever that is or may be'

​

A simple phrase that seems to speak for the way I have been living for the last 20 years or so.

The Japanese, in all their flair, have come up with the word 'Ikigai' (生き甲斐), which loosely translates to "a reason for being", or simply "a reason for getting up in the morning".

My Ikigai, after studying music at the Royal Conservatory of Gent in Belgium and gigging and recording in around the Benelux, brought me to many places.

It made me get up in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico filming and documenting gangs and prisons. It made me sit on maya temples in the middle of nowhere. It made me produce, write and perform in Austria, Portugal, Spain and France.

It almost killed me floating down the Amazon on makeshift canoes. It made me fall in love with Rio de Janeiro, adopt a new name, and tour and produce in Brazil. It made me train martial arts and reflect on life in the Philippines. It sparked a better understanding and love for being human filming in Japan.

Most of all it made me meet the most lovely bunch of people imaginable. Made me respect and be in awe of many great creators. it still makes me want to go down the rabbit hole even further. An inner call to arms, if you will.

These days I wake up in Taipei. Blending my humble Ikigai with that of a couple of million other souls. We're probably all striving for the same.

I'm loving it.

At times people can get confused by the fact that there's a lot of different names of me floating about.

It started out as a necessity in el salvador where i got baptised 'angel sebastian' because my dutch name triPPED everyone up. later, For undercover documenting in central america, i used a couple of aliases i logically won't get into.

in the southern americas i adopted 'XAVII LAIN' a contraction of the song 'xavii' by the band russian circles, and 'lain' from the japanese anime 'serial experiments lain'. it was a good fit with the portuguese language. after many productions there i kept it as my main name as a producer, also in europe.

after brazil followed a couple of years doing personal projects and playing in bands, whilst ghost writing (even a complete 'ghost album') for other artists.

recently i finished a fair amount of music that is very dear to me under the alter ego 'almymve'. which will see the light in the second quarter of 2016. more on that soon.

currently i roam around eastern asia as '熙維聯'.

so, what's in a name? nothing much really. but in the game of reinventing oneself it sometimes helps to shed your skin.

// XAVII