Denver, CO — Social Movements Inspire Flobots to Release new Album “NOENEMIES” through Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding. Denver’s alternative hip-hop band Flobots will release their full length album through a crowdfunding campaign that launches this week through the website Kickstarter. The album will be titled NOENEMIES and will incorporate thematic and sonic elements of more than a year of experiences collaborating with activists to create music for social movements, both locally and nationally.

Formed in Denver in 2005 by six Denver Public Schools’ graduates, Flobots first album, Fight With Tools, was self-produced and released locally in 2007. That is also the year they created a non-profit organization based on empowering youth through music, then called “Flobots.org” and today known as Youth On Record (Youth On Record has recently received considerable attention for opening a Youth Media Studio in the La Alma neighborhood as part of the redesign of the Mariposa housing complex by the Denver Housing Authority).

After winning 93.3’s local music contest “Hometown for the Holidays”, Flobots’ single “Handlebars” attracted the attention of major labels and catapulted them onto the national stage. In 2008 they signed with Universal Republic and re-released Fight With Tools nationally. “Handlebars” went platinum, received international radio airplay and was the fastest charting debut single in 10 years. The video for Handlebars currently has 38 million views.

Since then, the band has toured the US and Europe, appeared on late night television, and recorded 2 additional albums, Survival Story (Universal Republic, 2010) and The Circle in The Square (Shanachie Records, 2012).

The death of a mentor, civil rights historian/activist Vincent Harding in 2014, inspired Flobots to examine more closely the relationship between music and social movements. They began convening groups of musicians and activists to create and lead songs for street demonstrations, testing the emotional impact of different words and melodies on crowds of people. They called this project NOENEMIES.

As news spread about the NOENEMIES process, community organizations increasingly enlisted the Flobots in partnership for upcoming events, including such local groups as 350.org, Black Lives Matter 5280, 9to5 Colorado, and Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition. The Flobots also built a national partnership with the activist training program, the Ayni Institute, which serves the ecosystem of social change through research, training, and communities of practice”.

“Taking the time to deepen our relationships with today’s most vital social movements- that’s been part of our songwriting process” says Flobots emcee/vocalist Brer Rabbit (Stephen Brackett), “By reclaiming songs as tools for today’s struggles, we have learned what it means for music to truly resonate. This entire process has been preparing us to write the new album.”

This new approach to making music also involves a new type of touring. In September of this year, the band spent 3 weeks in small towns and rural communities throughout Colorado, performing concerts and leading “song sharing workshops” in schools and community centers as part of a partnership with Colorado Creative Industries called the Detour.

“The time we spent getting to know communities here in our own state was transformative,“ says emcee/vocalist Jonny 5 (James Laurie). “We experienced the power of music to bring people together in brand new ways. Now we’re taking all of those experiences and sampling them. Literally.”

The new album will feature 3 components

• a full length LP of brand new Flobots studio tracks, NOENEMIES
• a live recording of street music embodying this modern folk culture
• a movement songbook- featuring lyrics, tabs, and arrangements

The band is inviting fans to preorder the album this week through the crowdsourcing website Kickstarter.com, offering packages ranging from $5 for a weekly “flo-thought” to $10,000 for the actual bicycle that inspired the song “Handlebars”. A large variety of other rewards include digital downloads, vinyl copies of the albums, copies of a songbook with lyrics and arrangements for street music, access to a special listening party, and even a private house party.

The band is also offering some very interesting rewards with a personal touch. Laurie is literally offering the “shirt off his back” as a reward, and also a special private event in which he will be forced to perform stand-up comedy. Brackett is offering fans a chance to “Share Habits with Brer Rabbit”, by spending an afternoon comicbook shopping, or to pose philosophical questions to him and receive the answers as essays written in a cigar box. Cymbals and drum heads used by Flobots’ drummer Kenny Ortiz are also part of a limited number of packages, as is the chance to accompany him to a pre-season Broncos game.

Their Kickstarter campaign can be found at www.noenemies2016.com. It begins 11:59 October 13th and ends on November 17th.

Contact Information

Stephen Brackett (Brer Rabbit)
theflobots@gmail.com
www.noenemies2016.com