Interview: Roine Stolt(Flower Kings)
Roine Stolt: Flower Kings/Kaipa. Roine Stolt interview november 2003.

Flowography : The History & Secrets of a Rare Intelligent Rockband
 

  They are regarded as one of the leading, if not THE leading ,  progressive rock outfit of the new millennium ,
the FlowerKings are led by progrock icon Roine Stolt into a world of seemingly unlimited musical fantasy and flair.

  Coming together in late '93 on the back of Stolt's solo album "The Flower King", the band quickly became somewhat of a phenomenon in the progressive rock community  for everyone that once loved  Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, ELP, King Crimson or Focus.

  Building on the success of albums like "Retropolis",  "Stardust We Are" and "Flower Power" they toured  Europe and Japan & South America .
 Successful tours resulted in the recording of the live album, "Alive On Planet Earth", which was compiled from shows in both the USA and Japan -98 & -99.

  It  shows the essence of the textural and emotional  offering  that drives audiences wild and makes grown men cry .

 This is a band that probably has as much  in common with Mozart, Debussy , Lloyd Webber or Miles Davis  as with Pink Floyd, Beatles, Bowie  or Yes .

 The richness of  moods and  inventiveness has to be heard to be believed . 

 In  November 2002 FlowerKings speed into the future with yet another astonishing and adventurous  creation  ,"Unfold The Future".  A double CD containing everything from classic symphonic rock in pure 70's fashion (read Yes, Crimson , ELP, Genesis)  to weird Zappaesque or Miles Davis early  70's fusion.

 Both CD's  of course containing all the stylish trademarks of this kaleidoscopic band that took the progressive rock listeners  to unexpected hights in both America,Europe and Japan during the late 90's.

         Flower Kings are no simple copycats that merely try to relive the glorious 70's , they rather fuse their style with a remarkable knowledge of their past  , still looking into the future ,always ready to  point out new directions and new  possibilities, fusing all modern and unmodern styles ,
 opening doors, always ready to take risks !!!

  The band have been touring  all over the globe ,Europe, USA, Japan, Canada, South America and  left audiences raving for weeks about what seemed to be a highlight of their concertgoing life ,EVER !!!

  With a  relatively  fresh  rhythm section of Hungarian prodigy Zoltan Csorsz and bass madman Jonas Reingold and also  presenting labelmates "Pain Of Salvation's " Daniel Gildenlow as a keys,guitar,percussion and vocal sideman together with leadsinger/guitarist Roine Stolt,keyboardist
Tomas Bodin and guitarist /leadsinger Hasse Fröberg they did all embark on the initial leg of a European tour  in Nov 2002.

  Since then  they have all continued to florish and blossom in the most spectacular ways ,doing another  USA tour in June 2003, playing a memorable set at the No.1  progrock festival  "Nearfest" and releasing a number of sideprojects like the new Kaipa CD titled "Keyholder"  and "The Tangent" CD together with  PO90 keyboardist Andy Tillison and "Van Der Graaf Generator" saxman David Jackson and the Tomas Bodin, "Sonic Boulevard" CD . 

..with the kind permission of Mr. Roine Stolt
 
Flowiscography
 
 
Flower Pictures by Peter Ledenvik
 

The Flower Kings 2000at Grona Lund, Stockholm, Sweden..

    

The Flower Kings 2002at Grona Lund, Stockholm, Sweden..


The Flower Kings 2002at Nykoping Theater, Nykoping, Sweden..


The Flower Kings 2003at Uppsala for the DVD, Sweden..


Flower Kings May 28 2004 at Nykopings Teater, Sweden
by Harald "BigRedMachine" Bjervamoen
 

The Flower Kings has been one of the most profiled and sucessful bands in the revival of progressive rock over the last decade. The band is actually more popular outside their own country Sweden, but in May 2004 they are doing a short mini tour of Sweden and on May 28' the time has come to play "Teatern" in Nyköping.

This is my first Flower Kings concert and needless to say, the expectaions were very high. About 1 minute into the opening song it was obious that the band ment business and my worries, about them not being able to do their intricate music justice live, went right out of the window.

In fact, The Flower Kings blew me away and the musiscianship displayed during the concert was sometimes "jaw-dropping". The highpoint of the fist part was the masterpiece The Truth Will Set You Free taken from their latest studio album Unfold the Future. Bandleader, vocalist and guitarist extraordinare Roine Stolt is the obvious star of the evening, but despite that he feels like a humble person and gives the rest of the band plenty of room to shine.

Apart from percussion "lunatic" Hasse Brunisson, the most visual character of the band is vocalist and guitarist Hasse Fröberg who pulls out some nearly heavy metal "stunts".

During a brief unplugged set, keyboardist Thomas Brodin moved center stage for some lead vocals, and he unveiled a somewhat dark voice not unlike Tom Waits . Unplugged is not my favourite type of music but it was a useful "break" before the home stretch that started with Cosmic Lover, combined with a song from the latest Tomas Bodin solo album. Roine Stolt's emotional and soaring guitar solo (eat your heart out, David Gilmore), on this number was one of the musical highpoints of the concert.

Drummer Zoltan Csörsz , bassplayer Jonas Reingold are somewhat in the background visually, but not musically.

For me , it's amazing that multi-instrumentalist and singer Daniel Gildenlöw from "Pain Of Salvation" stays in the background the whole concert , but he seems happy with that.

The venue and the sound was marvellous and after a thunderous encore with Stardust We Are the audience went home with big smiles on their faces.

 
Flowmoreography
 

Flower Kings : http://www.theflowerkings.com

Related
Tomas Bodin : http://www.tomasbodin.com/
Jonas Reingold : http://www.reingoldmusic.com/
The Tangent Project
: http://www.thetangent.org/