Flowers Of Hell profile picture

Flowers Of Hell

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About Me


“Classical music for shoegazers” The Times
“A lush, enchanting, drama-packed, odyssey” The Evening Standard 4/5
“A captivating instrumental album…oddly beautiful and sinister at the same time.” The Sun
“Seriously blissed out stuff…essential listening.” Rocksound 8/10
“One of this year’s finest albums.” Reverb
Order
You can purchase the Flowers Of Hell album (in a limited edition cardboard digi-pack) from here .
£10.99
The Japanese version (with two bonus tracks and pull out liner notes that include a poem from Sonic Boom) can be ordered from HMV Japan
Or you can buy it in mp3 form for £7.99 from Northern Star Records
Bio
With half of us based in London and the rest of us in Toronto, the Flowers Of Hell are a trans-Atlantic rock orchestra made up of 16 or so experimental independent musicians. We mix orchestral and rock instrumentation while mainly creating wordless pieces that explore the meeting points of classical and blues-based music. Our name comes from the old blues ideal that the pleasure of the listener is born from the misery & toil of the musician.
July 2008 will see the UK release of a split EP from us and Will Carruthers of Spacemen 3/Spiritualized/Spectrum. It’ll be out on 3 inch CD on the Awkward Silence label and the tracklist is the full four parts of our Opus 66 (clocking in at 9 mins) plus two tracks from Will’s freelovebabies. On Opus 66, Will plays bass and former Spiritualized sax man Ray Dickaty plays alto & tenor sax, while the string section is comprised of Abi Fry of British Sea Power & Bat For Lashes, Mel Draisey of The Clientele, and Julie Penner of Broken Social Scene & Do Make Say Think, plus occasional Tinderstick Tom Hodges plays flute & baritone sax. The freelovebabies tracks, All Moon and Davy Love’s Locker are a deviation from the songbased work of their albums and the latter track was done with former Spectrum guitarist Kevin Cowen. All are unavailable elsewhere.
Our second album, Come Hell Or High Water, will be out later this year and it’s somehow turned out rather epic for a no budget record. The writing & arrangements were done by following synaesthetic visions and it involved recording 30 musicians in over 40 sessions that we pulled together over a year in London, Toronto, Prague, Detroit, & Abilene, Texas. A lot of the people on it have played in acts vastly larger than us, including the Patti Smith Group, John Cale’s band, Spiritualized, Spacemen 3, British Sea Power, Bat For Lashes, Broken Social Scene, The Earlies, Guided By Voices, The Clientele, Do Make Say Think, The Hidden Cameras, The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa, Tindersticks, The Early Years, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra amongst others. But we’re no supergroup - we’re more of an amalgamation of sideplayers with a few mainmen brought in as guests.
The Flowers Of Hell was started by Greg Jarvis as a studio project in 2002, expanded into a live band in London in 2005, and extended across the ocean to Toronto in 2008. Released in the UK and Japan, our 2006 self titled debut received critical praise for creating classical tangents from The Velvet Underground & Nico and the late Spacemen 3/early Spiritualized sound. It was produced by Tim Holmes of Death In Vegas at the Contino Rooms with guestwork from Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom.
For bookings contact: [email protected]
For press contact: [email protected]

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 12/5/2005
Band Website: Flowersofhell.com
Band Members: Sean Berry - Drums
Linda Noelle Bush - Drums
Melanie Draisey - Violin, glock
Abi Fry - Viola
Steve Head - Hammond, piano, bass, guitar
Tom Hodges - Flute, sax, saw
Owen James - Trumpet
Greg Jarvis - Guitar
Jeremiah Knight - Guitar
Jennifer Morris - Cello
Ronnie Morris - Bass
Barry Newman - Bass
Brian Taylor - Flute, hammond

Current/Past Collaborators & Guests: Sonic Boom, Tim Holmes, Ivan Kral, Will Carruthers, John Mark Lapham, Tom Knott, Julie Penner, Jan Muchow, Ray Dickaty, Hypnotique, Annelise Angus, Ian Thorn, Amy Laing, Sean Brodie, Guri Hummelsund, Ruth Barlow, Vicki Churchill, Anna Nicole-Ziesche.
Influences:Abstract expressionism
Musicology/Music Psychology
Overcast skies on windy days
Mood enhancers

Record Label: Awkward Silence, Earworm, Shifty Disco, Star Mole
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

New Tracks

We've just posted two tracks from our close to finished second album, Come Hell Or High Water. The album was recorded on a laptop and portable mixer in Toronto, London, Prague, Detroit, & Texas ov...
Posted by Flowers Of Hell on Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:58:00 PST

Back On The BBC

Three more songs from our BBC session were aired today on Stuart Marconie's Freakzone. For the next week you'll be able to have a listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/freakzone/index.shtml (Th...
Posted by Flowers Of Hell on Sun, 02 Sep 2007 02:58:00 PST

BBC Radio Session

We played a 14 minute version of Opt Out live on Tom Robinson's show on BBC6 Music last night. For the next week you'll be able to hear it online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe...
Posted by Flowers Of Hell on Tue, 29 May 2007 02:49:00 PST

Press Quotes

Here's some recent quotes about us from the UK media...   "Well worth investigating. A big brooding monster of an album. Really good stuff." Huw Stephens, Radio 1 "A captivating instrumental al...
Posted by Flowers Of Hell on Fri, 09 Mar 2007 10:43:00 PST

Video of Prague show and mp3 of Bratislava show up online

Not that we intend to keep a blog, but here's links to a video of our gig in Prague with Jan Muchow of Ecstasy Of St. Theresa guesting on bass. http://www.igraq.tv/video/flowersofhell.html And here's...
Posted by Flowers Of Hell on Thu, 22 Jun 2006 02:58:00 PST