Flower Kings Appreciation Thread

If I play The Flower Kings nowadays, I'll play one of their early albums to see if my opinion changes or I just play my favorites: Space Revolver, Unfold the Future (disc 1) and Adam & Eve.

I'm really getting into The Flower Kings now. Discovered them through Transatlantic. I'm listening to Stardust We Are on a music streaming site, but I definitely plan to buy something of theirs eventually. Loving the organ work on this album, especially on Church of Your Heart.

Get "The Flower King". A lot of people overlook it. It's astonishing. The first album before they were officially "the flower kings" Rarely ever heard such an amazing first album from anyone.

Jees guys, I'm a little late for my contribution to "my history on TFK" (page 100). I have hardly some spare time to review albums let alone visiting the forum last few months. Sorry for that but I still love my fav band to death of course.

I loved TFK from the word go and live they are amazing. For some reason tho', I thought Garden of Dreams just didn't hang together. I liked 90% of everything they did. Not that one. Then one day, I put it on again and it had gotten better. Ha ha! Bloody marvelous piece. My head just needed time. Weird!
I'm lucky to live near Uppsala in Sweden, so I get to the local gig they do occasionally. One time, Roines brother got on stage and they became the old version of themselves. That's my favourite way to see a band. Same with POS, free gig in a local square with only 100 people watching(happens alot). Unbelievable!

Just to let you guys know, an album by a side project of a Flower Kings member is coming out at the end of the month.

The band is called "Hasse Froberg and The Musical Companion" and the album is titled "Future Past".

It appears that the album is being released on the 27th of August.

Their myspace page has all the information and a cool little clip from the album that sounds really good! Here is the link: http://www.myspace.com/hassefrobergandthemusicalcompanion

Anyone who doubts how good TFK are.. watch this 1min 15 secs of unreleased video put out by Roine..  http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=106104599407009
It doesn't get any better!

Aargh!!! Don't use the ipod word here!! Steven Wilson would be very angry and maybe Roine would be disappointed in you too. Put the record on.

I know.. In fact you can download Porcupine mp3s on Amazon anyway. He refers to the way people use the low quality ones and cram them onto ipods etc. Tough for somebody like Wilson who is ALL about quality. I actually listen to the 5.1 albums he produces as often as possible. The work that goes into getting that little extra quality on the master is huge compared to the difference it actually makes to the sound to most people. Floyd did it a long time ago. Quad album but nobody could hear it due to lack of equipment to play it on, in the 70s. Ha ha! I had some and did hear it.

^^  I can relate Tom 

Still, I manage to listen to CD's most of the time.  But my son doesn't live with me full time and my girlfriend enjoys (or at least can tolerate) most of my prog albums.  I admittedly do have a large number of albums only (about 60 or so) in MP3 format that I acquired in a not-so-legal manner .  This was a number of years ago, and most of the albums were not available on CD at the time (or in any format......some still are not available to this day).  Quite a few I have also picked up the CD since then (or at least bought other albums by the same band).  And some I didn't much like, but have kept in case I change my mind some day.  The whole batch of them came from one person, who actually had paid for them all, and they were only shared with me and perhaps one or two other people (I know this because I got them from him via a secure FTP site that he sent me a user name and password for).  I actually could have gotten quite a bit more stuff from him, but decided that it wasn't how I wanted to get music.

I love booklets and artwork, leafing through while the album plays and thinking about how the artist intended it all to link together..........lyrically, audibly, and visually.  This just isn't possible with MP3 only albums (though I suppose you can get the cover and booklet in electronic format and see it that way, it's just not the same as holding it in your hands).

As an aside, one of the albums that I have only in MP3 format is Porcupine Tree's Recordings album, which will soon be available again for the first time in almost 10 years (it was a limited edition of "outtakes" from the Lightbulb Sun and Stupid Dream sessions, but to my ears is better than both those albums combined.........at the time it came out I had only heard one album of theirs and did not much care for what I heard live at Nearfest 2001, where they had Recordings on sale).  I will be picking that one up for sure when it comes out, because I would love to finally have it on CD.