Featured Artist/Event – The Flower Kings – March 6, 2008

Posted by christianhorner on March 6, 2008

This weeks featured artist is The Flower Kings

Some of the information on this page has been acquired from Wikipedia.

The Flower Kings are a Swedish progressive rock band. Formed in 1993 by veteran guitarist Roine Stolt as a touring band to support his solo album The Flower King, the band stayed together after the tour and have gone on to become one of the most prolific studio recording units in rock music of their era. In ten years they have released nearly 18 hours of music.

The Flower Kings have seen frequent personnel changes. The original line-up for Stolt’s solo album consisted of Stolt (vocals, electric guitar, bass, keyboards), Jaime Salazar (drums), and Hasse Fröberg (vocals). When the full band was formed, they added Michael Stolt (bass) and Tomas Bodin (keyboards). Michael Stolt and Salazar have both left the band since its formation, replaced by Jonas Reingold (bass) and Zoltan Csörsz (drums). Other contributors have included Hasse Bruniusson (percussion), Ulf Wallander (saxophone) and Daniel Gildenlöw of Pain of Salvation (vocals, guitar, keyboards and percussion). Zoltan Csörsz has recently been replaced by new drummer Marcus Liliequist. Daniel Gildenlöw recently left because of personal issues. According to a Myspace blog posted by Roine Stolt on April 2, 2007, Zoltan Csörsz will perhaps return permanently as drummer; he plays on their newest record.

Roine Stolt has written the vast majority of the material the band has recorded, with Bodin contributing most of the rest. The music is perhaps best described as “symphonic,” bearing a strong resemblance in many instances to that of Yes, and yet there are also hints of strong influence from the jazz fusion genre. The band’s lyrics are almost uniformly positive, affirming such values as love, peace, and spirituality.

Their 1999 album Flower Power contains one of the longest progressive rock tracks ever recorded, the eighteen-section, nearly 60-minute “Garden of Dreams.”

Roine Stolt recorded two albums with supergroup Transatlantic, with members of Dream Theater, Spock’s Beard, and Marillion, in 2000 and 2001.

In June 2007 they released Road Back Home, mostly a compilation of remixed songs from 1995 to 2006, plus “Little Deceiver” (a previously unreleased track) and the full version of their cover of Genesis‘ “The Cinema Show.” [1]

The following tunes are a compilation of “Horner’s The Best Of The Flower Kings” which come off of a number of studio and live recordings.

Enjoy,

Christian

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1. “Cinema Show” – 11:56
2. “Chickenfarmer Song” – 5:06
3. “Monkey Business” – 4:21
4. “Monsters & Men”– 21:19
5. “Hit Me With A Hit” – 5:31
6. “End On A High Note” – 10:43
7. “Garden Of Dreams Part 1 (live)” – 27:07
8. “Garden Of Dreams Part 2 (live)” – 17:20
9. “Silent Inferno (live)” – 16:13
10. “Hudson River Sirens Call 1998″ – 4:47
11. “Rumble Fish Twist” – 8:05