Hills and Flowers Must Die - Mayhem, København 3/5/11
From Aural Innovations #42 (May 2011)
I had never been to this pretty new underground place in an old industrial park. It was not that easy to find and my friend Peter called me in the middle of Flowers must Die saying they were driving around on their bikes and could not find it and they never made it, which might explain a little bit of why there were only like 30 people. The place is large with space for around 300 people. I met up with Tom, Sally, Ole, Nils, Rhona, Martin, Aron, Nick, and Tobias from Kommun2 (whose, band SKL was to play but had to cancel due to a sick guitar player).
Flowers must die started about 21:30 or so and this place has a very harsh should, with metal doors covering one side and the rest just concrete. They have a few things hanging form the ceiling to try to dampen the sound a bit but it does not seem to do much. Nick who was doing the sound said the PA was crap, so this does not help either. Anyway, they are a five piece band and have released on vinyl record and have another one out in about 2 weeks. The last track they played, which everyone really liked a lot, the synth player said was on the new record. They do a lot of improvising and spacing out. The Synth player did some vocals and trumpet stuff with a lot of delay and effects in one of the numbers. They opened with a quite slow doomy psychedelic thing and it took a while to evolve, as all their numbers seem to do. The guitar player on the left did most all of the lead while the other guitar player played very repetitive stuff while the bass player laid down really great stuff. He was really killer in the last piece they played where they launched into a total old school Hawkwind like jam. They had an older drummer who was quite laid back but solid. They were pretty good and played an hour.
It was pretty late, nearly 23:30 by the time Hills started to play and they wanted to close at 24. The folks in Hills said they were playing as a 3 piece today. I had never seen them before so I don’t know who was missing. For most of the tracks, they tape their organ onto one drone tone and then just play long with that. The organ guy, he started off on guitar and then switched to bass and also played the flute at the end of the show briefly. Later in the show the guitar player played the bass. They started off with a very slow moving 15min opening piece (see video). The female drummer, she was really hard working once the music and grooves started going. They play some really psyched out material and are very cool if you are patient. Sometimes they can be a bit like Wooden Shjips or White Hills (although the Hills guitar player never really played any ripping guitar solos), and with the drone, I am also reminded of the Spacious Mind. They played 4-5 pieces and less than an hour.
I had a really good time but my ears where hurting after being in this sonic death chamber. I can’t imagine what the free jazz, noise stuff they usually do in this club would sound like. Fun night.
Reviewed by Scott Heller