Flowers Must Die - Kompost

Kompost, the latest release from cult-loving Swedes, Flowers Must Die, is a road trip of psychotropic experience with an invasive sense of humour. A veritable jumble of ideas with the right amount of artistic integrity to bind it all together. 

The most startling surprise is where the cosmic rockers turn to funky disco on track “Don’t You Leave Me” ? Christ, I felt like breaking out my Funkadelic, Sister Sledge and Chic collection just to harbour the mood. Where is that Philly disco album I used to have, dammit ? Didn’t I throw out that Georgio Moroder compilation? 

The boys don’t dare outmanoeuvre Nile Rodgers, so onwards they move. On ‘Hey, Shut Up!’ Flowers Must Die come across like a space-rock version of Radiohead, complete with some pained, pregnant cat recitations I thought only Thom Yorke could pull off. Against a heavy brickwork of bass and drums, it’s a scorching track, and more fun than the brilliant Oxford gloom pedlars.

Elsewhere, the guys ignore the producer’s exhortations to reign in the excessiveness. Guitar takes the place of sax on Vangelis-like interlude “Dar Blommor Dor’ before the experimental freak-out, ‘Sven’s Song’ and its oriental overlay (you know, the harmonic drones of the Tambura or such), work a frenzy and weave in the odd dervish. The disembodied vocal is perplexing but hell, the mood is never constant. Only Anton Newcombe from Brian Jonestown has dared smoke weed that strong. The restless trance is, in any event, compelling. 

These guys must have been listening to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’ as well. On ‘Why’, the slow-moving mantric rock again embodies an oriental mood. Female vocals emulate the Muslim call to prayer; woodwinds swirl around, the organ bathes the sound in warmth. The whole enterprise is blissfully religious in the secular sense. Cult music that provokes and challenges. If Sweden was a totalitarian state, FMD would be outcast for subversion. Shostakovich for the new age, brothers !

The free-form jams on ‘Hej Da is conventional’; the 70s black funk with freak-out guitar on 'After Gong' calls to mind Pete Cosey’s jazz-funk experimentations with Miles Davis in the mid 70s; loops of simulated didgeridoo provide the backbone to ‘Kalla Til Ovisshet’ and, on ‘Hit’, there's the perfect blend of psych and funk, with the disconcerting wail of female voices outdoing the pregnant cat and sanctified call to prayer by just a whisker.

Kompost is a very liberating take on modern psychedelia for those getting a little tired of looking through the kaleidoscope.