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PSYCHEDELIC [sahy-ki-del-ik]
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1. of or noting a mental state characterized by a profound sense of intensified sensory perception, sometimes accompanied by severe perceptual distortion and hallucinations and by extreme feelings of either euphoria or despair.
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2. of, pertaining to, or noting any of various drugs producing this state, as LSD, mescaline, or psilocybin.
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3. resembling, characteristic of, or reproducing images, sounds, or the like, experienced while in such a state: psychedelic painting.
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4. a psychedelic drug.
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5. a person who uses such a substance. Also, psychodelic.

F.R.I.C.S.
Fanfarra Recreativa e Improvisada Colher de Sopa
(Leisurely and Improvised Soup Spoon Fanfare)

The Fanfare, as an instrumental ensemble rooted deep into the portuguese folk psyche, reveals its martial influences by displaying some of the most primal and elementary instruments of march and fight: simple, powerful percussion (bass drums, snares) and brass wind instruments, with no modulation from pistons, slides or valves (bugles, horns).
Its social and historical role is clear: the celebration of the key moments of communal life, with pomp and circumstance and as loudly as possible, usually as part of processions and marches.
The base repertoire of the Fanfare, bound by the limitations of instrumental scope and the amateur (when not coerced) quality of the musicians, stands at the crossroad of War and Celebration, and amounts to a powerful emotional portrait of the portuguese people and its profound inability to celebrate death with limitless joy, free from violence and bitterness.

The ensemble's harmonic, melodic and rhythmic limitations also reflect our willing submission to both the martial rigour of strict tonality and the rhythmic structures derived from marching; it is precisely in the combination of this (only apparent) submission and of the inner, unconscious conflict with a deep anarchic impulse causing us to be gloriously incapable of rigour and responsibility, which most usually manifests itself in the alcoholic tradition of this kind of bands, that the true anthropological greatness of Fanfares is revealed.
This tension between Celebration and Violence, between Rigour and Drunkenness throws light on the emminently psychedelic dimension of Fanfare performances, justifying the existence of a Leisurely and Improvised Fanfare which enacts that tension, expressing it through new forms and strategies (of which the practice of improvisation under the direction of a televised conductor is only the most visible). Therefore, the Leisurely and Improvised Fanfare's motivation is a blend of anthropological, sociological and musicological research one the one hand, and a strong penchant for collective catharsis, of which the strongest manifestation is, possibly, the penitential character of their tour of Portugal's district capitals in alphabetical order, which takes the band in a zig-zagging pilgrimage across the country.

The sense of mission that permeates the alphabetical tour is redolent of the Fanfare's martial origin, while the substantially celebrational character of its performances falls in line with its primordial social role.
What could be seen as the childish, shallow (maybe even offensive) whim of a group of northern portuguese musicians/outcasts is, in fact, a quasi-religious manifestation that, through the exploration of one of most primal forms of musical expression, rediscovers the sense of sharing that brings these so often alienated experimentalists closer to the psychic, emotional and musical sensitivity of a whole population.

And so the cycle is completed; the psychedelic experience is shared by all involved.