FAR EXP – Get On Your Grind [Ardamus, RNL, Fleetwood – prod. by Decompoze]
The Stick Mob – Sugarcane Road
Wild Flag – Racehorse
Iritis – Monster
We Were Pirates – Into Thin Air
Hailu Mergia – Ambasel
Be Still, Cody – Wrong Right
Philip Lassiter – Set You Free
Dirdy Redzz – Beat ya Feet
K-Murdock – Heartache
Sun Machines – Doom Street
Moss Of Aura – Wheels
Xamin – Humidity ft. Alex Leipold, Rebecca Schrader
AndrewN – Night Falls
Dark Narrows – This Altar
Wytold – Do You Know?
Wes Swing – Blood Branches
Broto Roy – Never Enough Cake
Lo-Fang – Silver
Dan Deacon – Wham City

Prince Rama:

Dan Deacon Ensemble:

Abdu Ali with the Dan Deacon Ensemble:

FlucT:

Future Islands:

Lexie Mountain Boys:

People of the festival:

Member of the festival security team:

Pool party:

Sun Ra Arkestra:

Oddisee – The Blooming
Studying – Because What Has Hardened Will Never Win
Zoe Ravenwood – The End of Something Beautiful
Jonathan Parker – CO86
Benjy Ferree – Leaving the Nest (It’s a Long Way Down)
Memphis Gold – Do You Still Want Me
Wes Swing – Blood Branches
Oooh Child Ensemble – Diko’s Groove
Sun Machines – Mare Island
Kev Brown – Always Instrumental
PLOY – XIX
igloo two – lokhu blues
Terracotta Blue – The Dust Settles
Luke Denton – Light & Happy
Girl Love Distortion – (You Don’t) Speak For Me
The Greatest Hoax – Opus no. 10
Derek Evry – Wake Me Up
Wild Flag – Racehorse
Zenon Slawinski – Sealed With a Kiss
Dan Deacon – Of the Mountains

Stewart Mostofsky saw the same post, and had the same general idea. For about a week, Schmidt and Mostofsky planned their respective events separately, but a mutual friend put them in touch, and they joined forces.

The first Fields, in 2014, was a kind of haven for local weird-cool music kids — the lineup at the Susquehanna State Park event included Baltimore stalwarts like Dan Deacon and Lexie Mountain Boys. It was such a hit — and such a draining experience for its organizers — that there was no festival in 2015.

But this year, it’s back, Friday through Sunday at the same site, which is off Interstate 95 near Darlington, Maryland. If the 2014 gathering was somewhat of a haven, the 2016 version is a full-on sanctuary, with more than 70 musical acts (including Deacon again, along with Future Islands, Juliana Huxtable and many more) performing.

“We’re dreamers and we’re doers and we just can’t do it any other way.”

This isn’t just a music and camping festival, the founders are quick to point out. For Schmidt, bringing in other artistic elements was of the utmost importance. This means visual and sound installations, theater, film, poetry, performance art and dance. And both Schmidt and Mostofsky like to tout the event’s “wellness” activities — including yoga, herb massage, tarot and Reiki-attuned candles.

“The multi-sensory, immersive, integrative aspect of kind of wandering around and there’s just arts everywhere” is the dream, Schmidt says. “Like you’re camping out there and you’re suddenly a part of this new world and it’s just all around you, that was really an inspiration for me and that’s something I really wanted to bring to the table.”

The two founders had somewhat overlapping reasons for wanting to plan a festival. For Schmidt, it was attending similar events and not loving the tunes, but loving the camping and overall atmosphere.

“I remember thinking ‘OMG it’s so amazing, camping out in nature,’” Schmidt says. “It’s like a vacation with a ton of other people with shared interests and you’re all kind of making this new home for yourself for the weekend and I think there’s something really beautiful about the communal aspect of it.”

Mostofsky grew up going to sleepaway camps and credits his astrological sign — Sagittarius — for his love of all things nature. (Schmidt says there’s a lot of Sagittarius in her, too.)

“The sense of community that would form in those situations was very powerful and definitely left a strong impression on me,” Mostofsky says.

Both Schmidt and Mostofsky were deeply entrenched in the Baltimore music and art scenes before planning their first Fields Fest. Schmidt, who works by day as a freelance writer of educational content, co-founded DIY space The Soft House. Mostofsky, a neurologist by trade, has run Ehse Records for over a decade.

When asked if it was hard managing all the aspects a multi-sensory festival, the pair laughs out loud before the question is finished.

“Sorry to laugh out loud — it’s so hard to juggle this,” Schmidt says. “Yeah, it’s crazy.”

No other way

Schmidt and Mostofsky say it helps that they’re totally in sync in one important area.

“We’re dreamers and we’re doers and we just can’t do it any other way, and yes that means sometimes taking on too much and sacrificing in certain ways,” Mostofsky says.

Now that they’re into their third year of running the event, they know exactly what kind of tone they want to set.

“The vibe is one [that is] both celebratory as well as thoughtful, sort of at the same time,” Mostofsky says. All the artists are at the top of their game, he says — it’s basically high art.

Schmidt is a little hesitant to use that phrase, but she basically agrees.

“I think there’s something more humble and gentle and loving,” says Schmidt. “But at the same time very inspiring and transformative.”

The Fields Festival runs Aug. 19-21 at Ramblewood Campgrounds, located in Susquehanna State Park in Darlington, Maryland. Tickets are still available on the event’s website.

Bob Boilen gets things started

Glen Hansard

Sharon Van Etten

Kishi Bashi

Laura Gibson

The Suffers

Dan Deacon

Crowd during Dan Deacon’s set

Bob Boilen in the crowd

All photos by Alex Schelldorf

NPR’s All Songs Considered began in 2000, long before on-demand streaming began to reshape the way people hear music. Sixteen years later, the show is still kicking — even thriving, having become one of the most popular podcasts on iTunes.

To recognize 16 successful years of music discovery, All Songs Considered hosts Robin Hilton and Bob Boilen are throwing a Sweet 16 party at D.C.’s 9:30 Club Jan. 13 at 7 p.m. Pop experimentalist Dan Deacon co-headlines the bash alongside singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten, with more special guests to be announced. No surprise, tickets have already sold out.

Lucky for you, WAMU’s Bandwidth.fm is giving away free tickets to the show. Want in? It’s easy. Just be one of the first to fill out this form below, and we’ll add you to our guest list. But act quickly! These spots will move fast.

Hyman started the cool indie label in New York in 1999 and brought it to D.C. six years later when his wife got a job at the National Institutes of Health. He’s been in the area ever since, long enough to celebrate his label’s basketball-themed Sweet 16 at DC9 this weekend. But there’s no guarantee he’ll stay awake for the whole thing.

Carpark’s “Sweet Sixteen” picture disc

“My brain stops working at about 8:30,” Hyman says in a phone call. “As long as I’m home by, like, midnight, I can sometimes go out.”

Not that Carpark could ever be called a “dad rock” label. Best known for its work with Toro Y Moi, Beach House, Speedy Ortiz and sister labels Paw Tracks (for Animal Collective projects) and Acute (for post-punk reissues), Hyman’s imprint seems as experimental as it ever was, which might become clear when you look at its forthcoming “Sweet Sixteen” picture disc: The slab has 28 tracks, most of them locked grooves. Cheeky.

But Carpark has certainly grown up. I first spoke to Hyman 10 years ago when I was booking Paw Tracks bands Ariel Pink and Animal Collective for a festival at my college. He served as my point of contact, sending me specs on their stage plots and Ariel Pink’s diet restrictions (no dairy). These days, Hyman doesn’t do that kind of granular work for his artists.

“I guess the majority of our bands have booking agents at this point,” Hyman says. “But back then, I was really doing everything.”

That includes buying a full array of gear for Ariel Pink in 2004, back before the eccentric pop wizard had any of his own.

“They were playing a show at Tonic [in New York], and they needed gear, so they asked me to buy them some,” Hyman says. “We went up to Times Square and went to one of those music shops. … We were buying a guitar amp. I think maybe they bought a guitar. I remember the guy was checking us out, and he was like, ‘So you guys startin’ up a band?’ I was like, ‘No, they’re playing a show tonight.'”

Hyman doesn’t seem bummed about picking up the tab — those early Ariel Pink records finally made money after a couple of years, he says.

That’s how he’s kept Carpark rolling since 1999, Hyman says: by striking a balance.

“Running a record label is a lot like gambling. Sometimes you win some, sometimes you lose some, and I guess the ones that survive, we’re luckier than others,” Hyman says. “It’s a lot about being at the right place at the right time, or just picking the right bands. We’ve been fortunate enough to have a few successes over the years, and it’s allowed us to keep going.”

Panda Bear’s Person Pitch is Hyman’s biggest success yet, selling more than 100,000 copies worldwide via Paw Tracks, he says. Beach House’s Devotion, Toro Y Moi’s Anything In Return, records from Dan Deacon, Animal Collective, Ariel Pink, Cloud Nothings and Speedy Ortiz have all fared well. He’s licensed music from Dan Deacon and Class Actress for commercials and TV shows. That all helps him stay in business, letting him hire staff, start Company Records with Toro Y Moi and afford life in one of the most expensive locations in America.

But Hyman has considered shutting down Carpark before.

“There’s been a few times over the last 16 years where I’ve felt a little directionless, and wasn’t sure why I was doing it or what I should be putting out,” Hyman says. “Right before I moved down here, it was one of those periods where I had started Paw Tracks and Acute, and I wasn’t sure what to do with Carpark.”

Baltimore artists like Dan Deacon and Beach House basically saved Carpark from oblivion, Hyman says. “I found new direction and energy down here, getting involved with dudes in Baltimore.”

Today, the Carpark family has a lot to offer signees, Hyman says, even though his labels are still pretty small. And like any label owner — or father — he doesn’t like to lose members of his flock.

“I do find it upsetting when a band decides to leave us, because I feel like it’s unnecessary. I feel like we have all the ability and opportunities that a bigger label has, so it just doesn’t make sense to me,” Hyman says. “I’m often frustrated by the predatory nature of some record labels out there.”

So how does a little shop like Carpark keep its signees happy? Does he reward loyal artists like Toro Y Moi?

“I don’t know about ‘reward,'” Hyman says. “With Toro Y Moi, we’re good friends and we’ve worked together a lot over the years, and we trust each other. It’s not like he wakes up on his birthday and finds a BMW in his driveway with a big red bow on it.”

Then again, buying all that gear for Ariel Pink may have set a precedent. Right?

“It was recoupable,” Hyman chuckles. “I don’t usually do that. That was a one-time thing.”

The Carpark Records Sweet 16 Celebration starts at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 7 at DC9.

Deacon recently spoke with NPR’s Arun Rath about the state of his art — how technology, opportunity and the law have guided his approach to music-making — and the making of his buoyant new album, Gliss Riffer. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below.

Arun Rath: So what on earth is a “gliss riffer?”

Dan Deacon: Gliss is a common music term — it’s short for “glissando,” which means to slide, like when you drag your hands across a keyboard, or slide up and down the neck of a guitar. And a riffer, obviously, is one who plays sick riffs. It’s something that auto-correct wants to make sure that no one can actually type: I’ve seen “Glass Rafter,” “Gloss Dripper.” But I kind of like the idea of the Internet trying to change the name of my record. I feel like it really speaks to the age we live in, where there’s such a homogeny of technology that you try to write something down, it instantly changes and no one even notices.

The first sound I recognized on this album is in the song “Feel The Lightning,” where it sounds like you’ve learned to play tablas. But I’ve also learned not to necessarily trust my ears when I’m listening to a Dan Deacon album.

No, it’s a bunch of slices and samples that I resequenced into that pattern. My music’s always been really rooted in the sculpting of either preexisting sounds or synthesis; with this record, I kind of revisited microsamples. My favorite thing to work with is just a really short sample, a little bit larger than granular synthesis — which is, like, zooming in on one cycle in a preexisting waveform and then making synthesizer sounds out of that. I keep thinking about how we’re immersed in media, but it’s still illegal to use.

What some of the early rap samplers went through when, all of a sudden, their music became illegal in that way.

Exactly. And copyright law’s getting more and more strict, but you can exist in two ways: You can either be remarkably wealthy and license whatever you want, or you can be really obscure and no one’s gonna care. But if you’re anywhere in the middle, collage becomes difficult. So I really like working with microsamples and sounds that are devoid of their original context, but exist just as a timbral element.

Like a pixel, in a way, of music. And to get around copyright issues, you can just use it if it’s that small?

Well, I would consider it fair use — because it’s completely recontextualized. A new derivative work is made, and there’s no way to tell what it was. [Laughing] We should really not talk about this. I’m expecting the emails that are like, “We’ve identified the microsamples you were discussing … ”

This album is layered and deep, the way your music has always been — but it feels like there’s a lightness, maybe a happiness, that wasn’t there before.

I don’t know. I’m glad you hear it. I was very stressed out while making the record because it was the first time doing it, in a long time, by myself. When you enter that process, you become the only ears in the room, and self-doubt can really emerge as a key player. And I kept thinking, are these songs like tomatoes that that I grew in my own garden — where I remember putting the seeds in the ground and patting the dirt on top, seeing it sprout and grow into an adult plant, and then picking the tomato and slicing it, and I’m eating it and all these memories are attached to this taste — and then my friends are just like, “Uh, the tomato’s gone. Are there more tomatoes?” Because you don’t have that attachment! I kept thinking, “Is this music something worth sharing, or do I just like it because I’m making it?”

It’s funny hearing you express that anxiety, because one of the themes of this album is stress, as much as there are themes to it. I understand there’s a great story behind the song “Learning to Relax.”

Yeah. I was doing what I thought was relaxing, but was actually just killing time: I was on Facebook. And a friend of mine posted a video from the Toronto Film Festival of Bill Murray talking about his approach to acting — or his philosophy about life, I guess. And it just completely blew me away, because he said, “Whatever your job is, the more relaxed you are, the better you are.”

And to me this was just like, “What are you talking about? I forgot that word even existed!” Because I very much was a person who was motivated by stress; I would use a deadline as a motivator. I think a lot of people do that, where they’re like, “I’ll just wait until the last minute, and that’ll light a fire underneath me and I’ll get it done.” And I just kept thinking, “Well, that’s a terrible way to live. Why am I building a house and lighting a fire in the basement just to see if I can finish the roof before it burns down my whole house?”

I started realizing how important it is to truly relax, and in relaxing, to be bored. You have to be bored. If you’re not bored, your mind is never gonna wander, and if your mind never wanders, you’re never gonna get lost in thought, and you’re never gonna find yourself thinking things you wouldn’t have otherwise thought.

The song “When I Was Done Dying” has a pretty trippy narrative.

I really like stream-of-consciousness. Musically, I work in a stream-of-consciousness, but with lyrics it’s hard for me to get out of my head. It’s very much like a battle, because I don’t practice writing lyrics as much, and I don’t have such confidence in my voice. I like the idea of consciousness, memory and body being three separate things that are constantly oscillating without any control. And that lent itself to this sort of psychedelic rambling.

I read a while back — tell me if this is wrong – that NPR helped you get a gig with Francis Ford Coppola?

It did! I believe it might have been this exact program. I was talking about how music can exist in multiple forms, how you can morph something after it’s set. With music, you can record something as a document, but then perform it live and completely and radically change it, either on a macro- or a micro-scale. And I guess Francis heard this and emailed me, which I thought was definitely not really him. It was like, “I’m Francis Ford Coppola; I’d like to work with you.” So I was like, “Suuuure, Francis Ford Coppola.” And then I started realizing it was real. I’d been wanting to score films for a long time, because it’s fun to write music outside of your own universe. My favorite part about it was just talking to Francis about technology, and how both of our art forms exist because of technological revolutions that happened prior to us — how people were, like, felling trees to put down crops that, now, we’re eating the fruit of.

I keep thinking that we’re there again: We’re on the cusp of a new art form that doesn’t exist, that isn’t music, that isn’t sculpture, that isn’t film. The same way that there was a time before photography, there was a time before film, there was a time before the recording arts, there was a time before poetry, there was a time before music. There’s so many new ways to expand upon the current technologies and make new art forms out of them, and I just can’t wait until, 20 years from now, there’s this new thing. Maybe this is already happening now, and I’m just too blind to see it. But I don’t know — I think there’s a new form of music out there, that’s gonna bud off of music and become its own thing.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.