we get real giddy organizing this summer’s fest, and thought it best to start sharing our excitement on a regular basis. today we’ve posted this mix to bandcamp offering introductions to ten of the bands that will be performing. more sounds next week, and information coming soon. and thank you so much to kodi frabricant for chillin’ together the visual representation.

In November of last year, just after coming across A Declaration of Separation, I had the opportunity to submit a short film into a festival. Now I’m not a filmmaker by any means, but the process of putting these images together felt so uniquely cathartic that I just couldn’t help but upload this to share. Not that any medium is ever comfortable, but props to everyone out there that gives new forms of expression a shot… it feels really great to be in unfamiliar territory.

This film is a nod to the realities we can create by addressing activities outside of our prescribed paradigm, which Freire calls “background consciousness“. United, becoming a movement beyond oppressive empires, we can share meaning and participate in the development of a sincere humanity. This is the sole principle of our Writing Home project, and considering the value that Paulo Freire has amongst our FMLY [if you didn't see his image and texts painted on the walls of our most recent fest] we will definitely make a point of providing further insight into his writings and doings in the coming months. Thanks for making our creative dissent feel less crazy. And special thanks to Emily Reo for starring and narration, plus Many Mansions for the tunage and letting me get some minor manipulation on.

Welcome to Total Bummer, the alternate universe that is Spirit Cat where by wake you shred with quiet giants and by slumber your favorite bands lay cuddle puddled on your new best friends’ floor. Where Mutual Benefit, Little Spoon, Dark Sea of Awareness, and Teengirl Fantasy aren’t only the names of artists in attendance but a total part of the actual experience… okay, maybe not the teengirl fantasy part. A festival planned in bedrooms, for music recorded in bedrooms, to be performed at future house shows… how much realer does a fest get?

We’ve had the honor of performing, think tanking, and being overly enthusiastic about everything for the fest’s previous two years, and this cinco de mayo weekend is no different other than the exponential growth that this fest has taken on in Orlando. In collaboration with Tiny Waves, who presented us with an underwater miracle for Orange You Glad Fest, there’s no doubts this is going to be a holy healer for 2012. However, it takes insane investment and commitment of all kinds to keep these kinds of not-for-profit festivals afloat so we’re here to pass around the Indiegogo hat to ensure that all artistic enterprises can be achieved and all touring bands are reimbursed. Donations go towards sweet rewards like illustrations of Pauly Shore or the first release of weekend passes! Peep more of the lineup and rsvp here, and very soon we’ll be announcing a FMLY tour en route to the fest that will sweep down the east coast in case you’d like to caravan.

FOLI, the Mandinka word for rhythm, has become an eleven-minute film about the Malinke tribe in Guinea who acknowledge rhythm into all aspects of their lives. This definition of rhythm is without musical-academic context, and introduced as the patterns and movements of daily life. Common Western practice has become removed from these inherent acts of collaborative sound-making and assigned these traits to an abstract realm of primitivism and tribal cultures. That is incorrect, empirical, and selfish. When you’ve absorbed this a few dozen times we recommend exploring the related videos.

Life is purposeless. Don’t be shocked. The whole idea of purpose is wrong — it comes out of greed. Life is a sheer joy, a playfulness, a fun, a laughter, to no purpose at all. Life is its own end, it has no other end. The moment you understand it you have understood what meditation is all about. It is living your life joyously, playfully, totally, and with no purpose at the end, with no purpose in view, no purpose there at all. Just like small children playing on the sea beach, collecting seashells and coloured stones. -Osho

Aside from their collaborative performances at FMLY FEST in December it has been a whiiiile since we’ve heard what’s up from snuggle buddies Yohuna and Truman Peyote… though I insist that there’s no rush for transparency when your previous output contains this value of limitless inspiration and exploration. To our excitement the twosome recently announced a MidWest tour together, beginning this Friday, and coupled with this reason for celebration came the official announcement that our San Diego-based label buds Art Fag are reissuing Yohuna’s Revery on both cassette and vinyl [pre-order & release date coming soon]. If you didn’t have the chance to cop one of those quarter-hour gems when they were self-released as an edition of 50 then now is your chance, and for the sweet sake of novelty the mastering on this go-around is at the hands of Pete Lyman (No Age, Mars Volta, Atlas Sound). SWEET! Additionally, Yohuna and Truman Peyote both have some major tunage to share this year, and when we have more concrete deets you’ll be the first to hear. If you’re fiending for new jams from our Eau Claire camp we highly recommend checking out Yohuna guitarist Adelyn Rose and her freshly released Mezzanine right here, or groovin’ on some endless Moro, plus we heard FARMS is reuniting, but okay you get it. The tour poster up top is a huge hi5 from our galpal Shelly who is co-designing this year’s FMLY FEST Brooklyn poster. Make sure to peep her site and these sweethearts on tour!

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
-Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet”

Tonight’s shareable comes from the oh so feel good Holstee Manifesto, a solid resource to share that anything can become possible with genuine, positive intention. Originally written in 2009 after the company’s three founders left their jobs, these words have risen to communicate a level of collective consciousness… not depicting how life or work should be, but documenting what to appreciate in life in order to go forward and breathe passion into our shared everyday. This morning Emily Reo emailed me an article from the Wire sharing a familiar sentiment orbiting the perspective of musician John Richards [of Dirty Electronics] and his desire to step away from the static process of recording to allow his sound making process to become indistinct as a social practice.

Art and music as a social practice is something I have become increasingly drawn to. Constructivists Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner, in their 1920 “Realistic Manifesto”, argued: “Art should attend us everywhere that life flows and acts… at the bench, at the table, at work, at rest, at play.” Similar themes are continued in the work of Joseph Beuys and the idea of social sculpture, where art is directly linked to and influential upon society. [via]

With many thanks to the open source movement of the last two decades, coupled with the popularity of all-pervasive digital networks, decentralizing “art” to the point of total dilution is shifting back into our nature. Group bike rides, sharing sounds, and living a passionate, collaborative life are no longer romantic ideas in the reflection of a post-Industrial era, but becoming the norm for successful terms of engagement. Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them. So go out and start creating. Long live the new flesh.

The planet has a kind of intelligence, it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being. The message that nature sends is, transform your language through a synergy between electronic culture and the psychedelic imagination, a synergy between dance and idea, a synergy between understanding and intuition, and dissolve the boundaries that your culture has sanctioned between you, to become part of this Gaian supermind.
—Terence McKenna

“If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.”
-Paulo Freire

Walking down Manhattan’s 6th Avenue I was turned onto a community chalkboard sprouting into a welcome embrace, this initial inspiration bearing the question “What’s Your Obsession“. Before adding my own input I stood and watched a crowd of strangers share chalk and room on the board that served as scaffolding to shield a newly abandoned storefront. This interaction, this peek into the sweetheart of New York City, has become a total highlight of recent memory. My ensuing internet search party brought me to Candy Chang‘s interactive public art project entitled “Before I Die“. The fundamental notion explored in Candy’s project, more-than-likely responsible for “What’s Your Obsession”, is that public space should inherently be designed to facilitate community engagement and collaboration. Not surprising, these themes find appreciated evolution and intersection in her Columbia University graduate thesis [highly recommended]. In collaboration with Civic Center, “Before I Die” saw its first site installation across the side of an abandoned house in New Orleans… and within the last year has collected over 25,000 responses in 7 countries from 12 walls. Go team.

The notion of turning a neglected space into an active invitation to engage with your community and get to know your neighbors is a wonderful embodiment of enlightened urbanism. What’s more, it’s a reminder that not all meaningful social platforms are accessed through a screen — an inspired antidote to the Foursquarification of urban social quasi-interaction. –Brain Pickings

This project is growing on a daily basis, and everyone has the chance to become involved. Visit “Before I Die”‘s project site to engage in direct collaboration, or help out with funds by purchasing a sweet lil’ toolkit for your inner urban do-gooder. Both Candy Chang and Civic Center are gorgeously creative, so make sure to read about their other projects here and here. I’ve become so fascinated by recent projects that explore the intersections of the analog and digital interface, and this humanitarian edge is really what sets the bar.

Directed by Andrew Thomas Huang, this film was recently awarded the Special Jury Prize at SLAMDANCE. Thought you might enjoy.