aaamusic | On 11, Jan 2011

Following its acclaimed release in Canada late last year, transatlantic space-rock orchestra The Flowers Of Hell finally release their third album, “O”, via Optical Sounds in the UK on January 31.

If anyone missed out on this when I first mailed them out, let me know – it’s a very special record. It 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, along with a live concert film and various special features.

The unusual format reflects the nature of the album itself: one 45-minute neo-classical instrumental track, constructed using improvisations within a meticulously crafted song structure. It’s an example of ‘absolute music’ – music that is not explicitly about anything, music that simply is. The “O” refers to nothing more than the surrounding nature of the sound itself, although band-leader Greg Jarvis jokes that the working title was ‘Business Suicide’.

“O” began as a home demo which was rehearsed and adjusted by the band, who then headed into a Toronto studio where, in the spirit of The Velvet Underground’s ‘Sister Ray’, it was recorded in just one take. The results were taken to Manchester where Tom Knott of The Earlies turned them into what Jarvis describes as “a vibrant 3D world of synaesthetic sights”.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that both Jarvis and Knott are among the 3% of the world’s population who have synaesthesia, a neurological condition that causes the senses to intermingle. Essentially Jarvis sees sounds as shapes, while Knott thinks in terms of colours. “The discussions in the studio were rather interesting as a result,” recalls Jarvis. “They went along the lines of, ‘Tom, that cello is a bit too furry right now’, ‘I’m glad you said something about it, Greg, it was seeming a little too red to me’. While I was building a virtual world of shimmering, pulsating, floating shapes around us, he was swathing us in vibrant moving colours, casting them all about the room.”

The Flowers Of Hell were formed in London in 2002, and began playing live in 2005. When Jarvis returned to his native Canada in 2007 he formed another branch of the group which operates simultaneously with the original one in the UK. Their two albums to date (2006’s self-titled debut and last year’s ‘Come Hell Or High Water’) have featured members of Broken Social Scene, the Patti Smith Group, Spiritualized, Spacemen 3, British Sea Power, Bat For Lashes, Guided By Voices, The Clientele and others.

In 2008 the band were personally invited by Kevin Shields to support My Bloody Valentine in North America, but the highest praise of all came when NASA’s mission control synced one of their songs with footage of the Space Shuttle Discovery’s 2009 voyage. The video went viral among Space Center workers, resulting in the band making an appearance on the Space Channel.