In a world where musical boundaries are constantly pushed and redefined, few bands encapsulate the spirit of sonic exploration quite like The Flowers of Hell. Renowned for their genre-defying soundscapes and experimental approach, this Canadian/UK collective continues to captivate listeners with their unique blend of orchestral arrangements, shoegaze textures, and psychedelic undertones. Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the band to discuss their musical journey, their latest endeavors, and the highly anticipated first vinyl pressing of their cult classic album, 'Odes,' released on Record Store Day in April 2023.

The Flowers of Hell is an interesting name for a band. Where did it originate and were there any other names in the mix at the time it was agreed upon?

It’s rooted in an old blues idea about how music transforms the misery and toil of musicians into the joy of listeners, as well as Baudelaire’s poetry book, Les Fleurs Du Mal. I came up with it in London as a response to all the bands parading around with twee indie names. It was the only contender. 

You’re a Toronto/London based band, formed back in 2005 - Tell me something fascinating about the band that not many people would know….

Ha, that reminds me of a great show we did in Bristol once where most of the audience were entranced, swaying with their eyes closed. Later we were getting hammered on the dance floor of a Top 40 disco and two of the audience came in, their jaws dropping when they spotted us grooving to tasteless hits. They thought we’d be somewhere reading Nietzsche and shooting smack!

There is quite a good number of people in the band. Is it tough when it comes to shows and recording sessions owing to availability and other commitments that they may have?

In my early teens I was in the Royal Canadian Air Cadet’s 666 Squadron marching band that had 20 people, so the logistics of large groups is kind of innate to me! At one point, I had a duo side project with the Flowers’ founding drummer Guri Hummelsund doing reggae covers of White Stripes songs as The Red Stripes – that was definitely easier to organize. 

Your latest offering, a cover version of Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’, captures the restrained brilliance of the original recording whilst branding it with your own special mark. Was this a track that you wanted to cover for a long time? 

It and Heroin are cornerstones of the two chord guitar stuff in our repertoire so it got played once or twice at an early rehearsal and was on a playlist I pulled together when we were starting the band. 

What is it about the music of Joy Division that turns you on?

TBH when I was younger, other than ‘Atmosphere’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ (which I both absolutely love), I always thought Bauhaus kicked the ass out of Joy Division. But as I get older, I get Joy Division more. As a teen I couldn’t get into Ian Curtis’s voice and in my first band wrote a snarky punk song with, “Let’s all sing like Ian Curtis, no-one else does; And let’s all swing like Ian Curtis, no-one else does”

Given the chance to travel back in time and attend a writing session in Manchester with the band, would you have suggested they do anything differently?

Don’t kill yourself Ian! That’d be my suggestion! What a fucking waste. I’ve long regretted not talking to Kurt (Cobain) when I was backstage with Nirvana in Slovenia at what became their second to last show (I was Geffen’s Eastern Europe rep then). Kurt was visibly down and ensconced in a convo with Krist (Novoselic), so as I was meant to look after them for an upcoming week off in Prague they were taking, I didn’t go over. Kurt then OD’d in Rome, the Prague holiday was cancelled, and he shot himself six weeks later. I often think that if he’d had that week off in Prague, a city that was full of so much joy and life and love and art, things would have been different for him (and maybe for music!)

To celebrate Record Store Day (UK), you announced the first vinyl pressing of your cult classic ‘Odes’ album on 180g red vinyl with a deluxe die-cut sleeve via Space Age Recordings. How many records were available on the day?

I’m not sure how many the label have pressed up, but it won’t be a lot.

You made ‘Odes’ available on import to International record shops on May 5th. How can non-UK-based fans ensure that they are able to order their own copy? Will mail-order also be an option through Space Age Recordings or through your Bandcamp, for instance? 

I believe there’ll be some copies hitting Bandcamp two weeks after Record Store Day – and apparently international shops can already order. I know some Canadian shops have received copies already!

The 'Odes' album pays tribute to some of your favourite songs and influences, creating orchestral-pop covers of works by Bob Dylan, Klaatu, Stereolab, Laurie Anderson, The Velvet Underground, Siouxsie & the Banshees and Neutral Milk Hotel. Would you say these are the artists who have influenced you the most over the years? Or who would you include in that special category? 

Well really it’s the early-Velvets and late-Spacemen 3/early-Spiritualized/early-Spectrum that are our core influence (I feel the records they did in that period were a new genre and that there’s a need for more music that sounds like that). 

We didn’t do any Spacemen related stuff on Odes as it’d just end up sounding Spacemen-ish, rather than being an artistic interpretation. I had the Banshees’ covers album ‘Through The Looking Glass’ as a teen and was basing Odes on that; applying our sound to other people’s songs. I got to give Steve Severin from the Banshees a copy of Odes and we had a great chat – it turned out they’d based their covers album on Bowie’s covers album, Pin Ups!

‘Odes’ features appearances from Sea Power’s Neil ‘Hamilton’ Wilkinson and Abi Fry (Bat For Lashes, Sea Power), Prague underground legend Ivo Pospíšil and the Plastic People Of The Universe. This is fantastic, so I’d like to ask how you went about getting all of these people involved in the project?

I’d asked my long time Czech-American mentor Ivan Kral (from Patti and Iggy and Cale’s bands) if he’d sing the Plastics song I wanted to do, and he insisted I should have Ivo do it instead – ever wise! Meanwhile Abi was one of the people who started The Flowers Of Hell with me and she’s on all our records - though hasn’t played with us live for years since early on she got busy as a full time member of Sea Power. 

And the start of the Flowers was tied to the rise of British Sea Power; the night I met our founding co-guitarist Ruth Barlow, she took me to see the then unknown British Sea Power at a tiny London venue, and one of my earliest dates with Guri who became our drummer was to a one of their show. We were all soon friends with them. They’re always great live, but wow, those early shows of theirs were high level amazing.

I read that Lou Reed began the final episode of his BBC6 / Sirius-XM New York Shuffle radio show in 2012 premiering three tracks from your ‘Odes’ covers album and he even went on to complement your music and vision at length - How did you feel when you heard his now-historical comments? Was this a game-changing moment for you of sorts? 

Honestly I’d just gotten back from a contemplative week motorcycling around a Ometepe Island in Nicaragua and had decided I was done with music and all the negativity that goes with doing the business end of it. Then I heard Lou’s praise! And scrapped the decision to stop! It meant more to me than a Grammy ever would.

Following the release of ‘Odes’, you’re set to release  'Keshakhtaran', your sixth studio album on May 12th (also your first in six years). Also another massive undertaking with the involvement of such artists as Rishi Dhir (Elephant Stone, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Black Angels, Beck) and avant-accordion legend Angel Corpus Christi (Suicide, Spiritualized, Dean Wareham). Can I ask why there ended up being a 6-year gap between releases?

Due to Lou’s praise, I worked harder than I had on anything I’d ever done to make a complete four movement symphony with psychedelic elements, at last realizing the vision Steve Head and I had when we started the Flowers Of Hell. The final year of it, I lived with no social life other than my soprano Danie Friesen dropping by once a week to work with me. The year after that, I took off from teaching music business studies, in order to fully work the business end. I got rejections from over 80 labels and booking agencies and the symphony absolutely flopped – despite it’s quality. Yet in 2019 we got to perform bits of it at the Moscow Conservatory (where Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Prokofiev, Rimsky and others all taught/studied/played) – and they commissioned me to come up with a full score for them to premiere with their inhouse orchestra. I completed that just as the war started in 2022 with any such performance ending up cancelled. So a second round of hard work and flopping for my Symphony No.1!

Did you find the COVID pandemic a particularly creative time for the band or was it a case of burying your head in the sand and letting it run its course?

After the symphony’s initial flop in 2016, I never wanted to go through all the isolation of making an album again – and to do anything that’d musically surpass our symphony, it’d require a lot of time of just me along at a computer. But then the pandemic forced me into just that! Like most people, I couldn’t write anything new during lockdown (nothing in, nothing out), but I had a 42 minute space guitar meditation piece I’d done in 2017 for a girlfriend at the time who used to meditate on my studio floor while I’d play and watch what things seemed to have an effect on her. So I dusted it off, enlisted my similarly caged up bandmates and musician friends, and as they sent in layer by layer and I cut and edited, cut and edited, Keshakhtaran was born. Listening to the works-in-progress became a way for me to escape myself at a time when I was living as if under house arrest.

Theoretical question: You’ve been asked to curate the headline acts at a major 3-day music festival and you can choose any bands or artists (dead or alive). Who would you choose and why?

The Velvet Underground reunion gig I saw was sadly weak, so they’re out. It’s cooler for Spacemen 3 to never reform, so that’s them out too. But with resuscitation, I couldn’t pass up the greatest of the greats, Elvis Presley and Beethoven – nor the chance to see The Cramps once more!

Name 3 things that you CANNOT live without….. (apart from obvious things like air, water and food!)

I think we’re adaptable creatures and will find that, other than ‘the obvious things’, there is nothing we can’t live without. I wouldn’t want to live without love, art, and the light of the sun, but if the world gets nuked, I’d go on without.

Do you have any upcoming live shows or festival appearances over the next year? 

We’ve got a dream gig June 7th at London’s legendary 100 Club with Spacemen 3’s Pete Bassman joining us, The Confederate Dead, and interim music by Death In Vegas’s Tim Holmes! Also might be playing Sea Power’s Krankenhaus festival in a castle at the end of Aug, stay tuned.

You’re all over social media, but where is the best place for folks to stay updated on your musical movements?

Our mailing list! Which can be found on our website, www.flowersofhell.com and Instagram (@theflowersofhell) – it’s the platform we use most. Though do give our Facebook page a like!  

Lastly, I’m keen to hear about any artists (especially newer ones) who you are currently enjoying…..

Definitely Sarah Pagé – she’s a Montreal harpist who through amps and effects and ingenuity manages to do new things with a thousands year old instrument. For verse-chorus-verse stuff though, I should plug Vera Ellen, a New Zealand artist I caught live in Auckland the other night who’s new album ‘Little Home Noises’ doesn’t have a single weak song on it – it’s indie done great.

The 'Odes' LP can be purchased HERE

Their ‘Keshakhtaran’ LP can be purchased HERE

Tickets for their June London show can be ordered HERE  

Interview by Steve Muscutt