The Flowers Of Hell unveil sixth album, Keshakhtaran
Toronto-London collective The Flowers Of Hell mark the first vinyl pressing of their Lou Reed-endorsed 2012 cult classic Odes album, now available directly from Rolling Heads and other select UK stores. With a deluxe die-cut sleeve, this 180-gram red-coloured pressing was released for Record Store Day UK via Space Age Recordings.
Watch the video for “Atmosphere” from the Odes album below.
On May 12th, the band also releases their sixth album Keshakhtaran (their first in six years), previewed by ‘Foray Through Keshakhtaran’. A 42-minute psilocybin meditation piece (in two parts), it involves 20 artists, including Rishi Dhir (Elephant Stone, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Black Angels, Beck) and avant-accordion legend Angel Corpus Christi (Suicide, Spiritualized, Dean Wareham). It is available across digital platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify, and Bandcamp.
Listen to Keshakhtaran below and learn more about The Flowers Of Hell via our Five Questions With segment.
Care to introduce yourself to our readers?
We’re a 16-piece trans-Atlantic experimental orchestra who keeps making the tripped-out music we want to hear, rather than trying to do something popular. Artists are way too hung up on popularity these days – we do this for the music, not the ‘likes’. If we wanted to make money selling T-shirts we’d have created a clothing brand, not a band.
Tell us a bit about your most recent release.
Keshakhtaran is an instrumental 42-minute psilocybin meditation journey in two parts, led by harp and sitar augmented with tremolos, flutters, woodwinds, opera soprano & more – it’s a trip!
Meanwhile, Odes is our 2012 cult covers album (that Lou Reed loved, ahem!) and it’s been given a deluxe die-cut sleeve LP release for the UK’s Record Store Day thanks to Space Age Recordings. It’ll be available on May 5th in Canada like all RSD UK releases, but best to ask your shop to order it!
The Odes LP can be ordered now from anywhere in the world via Rolling Heads Records https://bit.ly/42IMowH
Where do you tend to pull inspiration from when writing?
Well, Keshakhtaran was inspired by drugs and a need to escape my head during 13 months of Toronto lockdowns. Proper yoga-ey meditation would have been healthier, but we’re musicians, not wellness instructors! Our music always aims to be transportive and we work with whoever we reckon can help us reach into new realms.
Do you have any upcoming shows you’d like to tell us about?
We’re playing London’s legendary 100 Club in June, with Spacemen 3’s Pete Bassman. It’s where British punk was born – I went on a pilgrimage to it as a teenage Sex Pistols fan! Hopefully, we’ll do Montreal and Toronto in the fall. Tickets can be ordered at www.wegottickets.com/event/580710
The Atmosphere vid was all about creating an, erm, atmosphere. Coming up we’ll do one for Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft – not sure if we’ll reach the aliens with that.
What are your goals for 2023?
I’ll be wrapping up a book on my experiences as a young record exec in Eastern Europe in the ’90s after the overthrowing of communism. I watched their society transform, worked with a lot of big acts like Nirvana and Bowie, and had more than a few crazy travel adventures, all of which I kept journals of. Life in Prague then was like the San Francisco of the ‘60s – but with no Vietnam War hanging over it, just good hedonistic times in a country with a Velvet Underground-worshipping playwright as a president!
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