Cochlear Implant

THE FLOWERS OF HELL w/ Flora. Brixx Bar & Grill (10030-102 St, downstairs). Thu, May 14 (doors at 8pm, show at 9pm). Tickets: $8 at the door.

The ultimate show for a space-rock band would be a concert literally in outer space. Not too many bands can say that they’ve gigged in front of extraterrestrial life, or brought their dark energy into dark matter.

The Flowers of Hell haven’t actually played in space, but they’ve come a lot closer to than most. And when the 16-piece, trans-Atlantic band shuttle through Edmonton next Thursday, chances are they’ll be bringing some of their psychedelic spaciness with them.

The Flowers of Hell’s relationship with regions beyond Earth’s atmosphere is rooted in more than their sound, which has been aptly (if wordily) described as “beauteous quasi-classical folk-blues cum motorik shoegazing pop.” The band’s highly eclectic, very cinematic sound has a great range, and apparently so does its fanbase. When Greg Jarvis, the creative force behind The Flowers of Hell, started receiving e-mails from the ridiculously smart (and, it seems, musically passionate) National Aeronautics and Space Administration about how much their eclectic orchestra was loved around space headquarters, the band was a little blown away. “It was pretty great to find out that the people at NASA are into space rock,” Jarvis says.

According to Jarvis, it all started when a guy who actually worked at mission control got hold of some of their stuff and synced a FOH track with video of the launch of Discovery’s latest mission. From there, he says, “the song became sort of a viral hit at the space station.” In fact, the latest e-mail Jarvis received from a NASA fan was sent from an orbiting shuttle just before it re-entered the earth’s atmosphere — you know, just a quick out-of-planet note stating, once again, how much they enjoy the band’s stuff.

The love the NASA crew are showing for the band makes sense once you learn about the scientific forces behind Jarvis’ music. Jarvis has the neurological phenomenon known as synaesthesia, which in his case means that different sound timbres literally cause his brain to superimpose different shapes and images upon the reality he is seeing.

“Drums will be like a set of dots,” he says, “[and] a distorted guitar kind of looks like a furry brushstroke running across things.” (He describes his condition as walking around with an iTunes Visualizer in his mind.) In fact, this phenomenon gives him such pleasure that when making an album he focuses on “really just making a record that is going to light up my synaesthesia,” and composing the songs often becomes a matter of arranging those various shapes.

And judging from the sound of FOH’s latest effort, Come Hell or High Water, there were a lot of shapes coming from Jarvis’ speakers. “The only time [synaesthesia] can be distracting,” he says, “is when you’re in noisy environments or if you’re trying to concentrate on something and there’s a lot of talking going on.”

And even if the people who hear his music don’t see the same translucent shapes that Jarvis does, he enjoys how FOH’s sound-shapes “kind of shut people up for a while.... The idea of being briefly taken away somewhere else is the level we try to hit with the live show.”

Whether that place is outer space or a location deep within Jarvis’ mind remains unconfirmed; however, we can say that NASA has no plans to launch any probes into his brain, which means that currently, the only way to access it is by seeing his band play live.