Flowers Must Die - Sista Valsen EP

Sweden. The country that gave us ABBA, Roxette and Ace of Base, now shunning pop and under an extraterrestrial spell, spawning all manner of psych-rock mutations. Word has it there was an arrival in the north of alien replicants pre-programmed to assimilate a myriad of influences, and tasked by higher powers to create an organic sound, out of seemingly unalike earthly origins. Scurrilous rumours! Don't they know of the legacy of the Swedish prog forefathers? Baby Grandmothers? Trad Gras och Stenar? International Harvester? Who, you say? Christ, I don't know, I live 30,000 kilometres away. Still, the legacy, whatever it is, has been taken up by some great young musicians. Music that fuses cultures and breaks down barriers. 

The thing that strikes me about Flowers Must Die, and countrymen Hills, Goat, and Capri Informis is their knack for taking psych, space-rock and jazz to places that petition the body as much as the head, that is to say, the music can of course process your brain into a liquid ooze, but your body will take its own leads from the hypnotic groove. A groove that, in the case of Goat, and Flowers Must Die track ‘Kruta’ especially, even approximates the ecstatic culmination of of the best of rave parties.  

The latter point being that bands like Flowers Must Die, Goat, and Hills, (that wonderful Chilean outfit Follakzoid, and Californians, White Manna also come to mind) know how to resist art-rock indulgence by transforming their music into a kind of dance music, where the brain can give way to the trance, the ecstatic stupor. This is why people either love or hate Brian Jonestown Massacre for instance. You’ve got to give way to the haze, the daydream, the beauty of repetition. It's like a raga for western audiences.  It's escapism.

Escape Into some quality trance with this great EP.