DOUBLE THE FUN
With the extra time on their hands, The Flower Kings are back sooner than anticipated. Roine Stolt tells Prog why the inspiration won’t run dry anytime soon despite releasing two double albums in less than 12 months.
Words: Chris Cope Images: Lilian Forsberg
The Flower Kings, L-R: Zach Kamins, Hasse Fröberg, Roine Stolt, Mirkko DeMaio, Jonas Reingold.
I
t wasn’t really meant to happen this quickly. The Flower Kings have now released two albums in less than a year – and the latest is a double behemoth that spans more than 90 minutes. But really, what else is there to do in a pandemic than write a 21-track epic?
“We have a drummer from Italy, so he couldn’t really get out of Italy, and the keyboard player is from America – we couldn’t get in there, and he couldn’t get out,” explains the band’s ringleader Roine Stolt.
“I think we probably would have started working on an album anyway this year, but probably more like October or November, I think. We just moved everything and started pretty much working as soon as we decided to make an album.”
The unexpected release of Islands makes it a double salvo for the global prog rockers, after the well-received Waiting For Miracles was released in November last year. A rich vein of prolificacy for sure, but the five-piece are a writing machine, the cogs always whirring, with a lot of the music already part formed, waiting to be developed and ready to be charmed into life.
“With this album, what I told the guys is: don’t hold back. If you have some material that sounds a little bit different, send it round.”
Files were zapped around the globe like bouncy balls, with Stolt piecing together the record at his home studio in Uppsala in Sweden. You wouldn’t know that, though, with the organic aura which floats around much of the album belying the fragmented approach.