“They take orchestral pop to the next level” Rolling Stone
“Stirringly evocative” NME
“As much sonic experimentation as pop masterpiece” Exclaim
Having received accolades from Rolling Stone, My Bloody Valentine, and NASA’s mission control, transatlantic space-rock orchestra The Flowers Of Hell release their third album, “O”, through Optical Sounds via Outside Music on November 16. The release is a 45 minute classical-meets-shoegaze track that comes on a double-sided CD/DVD, with a regular stereo mix on the CD side and a 5.1 surround sound mix on the DVD side, along with a live concert film and various special features.
Titled “O” for its surround sound nature, it was recorded in a Toronto studio with Juno nominated engineer Jon Drew (Fucked Up, The Arkells, Tokyo Police Club) in just one take after being meticulously demoed, rehearsed and performed in the months prior. Blending improvisations within a fixed song structure, it’s an example of ‘absolute music’ – music that is not explicitly about anything, music that simply is.
For mixing, the Toronto recordings were taken by the group’s leader Greg Jarvis to Manchester where he and Tom Knott of The Earlies turned them into what they describe as “a vibrant 3D world of synaesthetic sights”. Both Jarvis and Knott are among the small percentage of people who have synaesthesia, a neurological condition that causes the senses to intermingle. Essentially Jarvis sees sounds as shapes, while Knott sees them as colours. “While I was working on building a virtual world of shimmering, pulsating shapes all around us, he was swathing us in vibrant colours, casting them about the room,” Jarvis recalls.
The Live At The Music Gallery concert film captures the Flowers Of Hell launching their 2009 Come Hell Or High Water album at St.George The Martyr’s Church in Toronto. A long time fan of The Cowboy Junkies Trinity Session record (which was recorded in a Toronto church for $300 with one mic and sold 3 million copies), Jarvis tracked down its production team of Peter Moore and Perren Baker – and the legendary microphone they’d used for the Trinity Session – to make a recording of the launch night. Jarvis says, “We were lucky to get Peter – recently he’s done stuff for Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, plus he’s been restoring The Basement Tapes for Dylan & The Band.”
The Flowers Of Hell were formed in London in 2002, and began playing live in 2005. When Jarvis relocated to his native Canada in 2007 he expanded the group into a transatlantic orchestra, with key members flying across the ocean for touring and recording. Their previous albums have featured guests from Broken Social Scene, the Patti Smith Group, Spiritualized, Spacemen 3, British Sea Power, Bat For Lashes, The Earlies, Guided By Voices, The Clientele and others. In 2008 the band were personally invited by Kevin Shields to support My Bloody Valentine but the highest praise of all came when NASA’s mission control synced one of their songs with space footage. The video went viral among Space Center workers, resulting in the band appearing on the Space Channel.