Swedish countercultural collective Flowers Must Die’s fourth full-length recalls an age of free-form jazz-informed post-psych kosmische freaking.
While refracting the nascent Hawkwind template through an avant Ornette prism, and then jamming wildly until you inevitably got lost and had to stop was all well and good, but when the black bombers and Double Diamond wore off, you weren’t even left with a serviceable tune to whistle. Progressively speaking, it was dangerously easy to progress right up yourself and entirely fail to satisfy your audience. Kompost has moments when FMD appear to be holding their map upside down (Kalla Till Ovisshet), but as the album unfolds, the band increasingly deliver you to your destination with the reliable efficacy of a black cab. The saxed-up After Gong lives up to its name, Why? matches spiralling flute with Lisa Ekelund’s space whisper vocals (darker and eerier than Gilli’s musky and seductive), while Hej Da contrives to shove Hawkwind’s Space Ritual through phaser, flanger and chemist’s shop. Priceless pop tropes and Ekelund’s embrace of Britfolk clarity edge Don’t You Leave Me toward orthodoxy, before the raging Hey Shut Up enthrals with engaging Can excellence.
