Black Flower - Future Flora

With a hybrid jazz based on African grooves, Ethio-oriental melodies and psychedelic dub this Belgian five-piece creates an atmosphere where ancient and modern sounds fuse into a powerful, hypnotic, and groovy sensation.

Receiving critical acclaim for their second album Artifacts (SDBANU 002CD/LP, 2017), the Belgian quintet are pleased to announce the release of their much-anticipated third album entitled Future Flora. Piloted by saxophonist/flutist/composer Nathan Daems (Ragini Trio, Dijf Sanders, Echoes of Zoo), the input of notorious musicians, drummer Simon Segers (MDC III, de Beren Gieren, Stadt), cornet player Jon Birdsong (dEUS, Beck, Calexico), keyboardist Wouter Haest (Voodoo Boogie), and bassist Filip Vandebril (Lady Linn, The Valerie Solanas) leads to the specific universe that only Black Flower is able to create.

Where debut album Abyssinia Afterlife (2014) and Artifacts bathed in an atmosphere of psychedelics, mythical figures, ancient sounds, and modern cultures, Future Flora refers to the power of plants and their importance for the future. Future Flora is a metaphor for the importance of feeding and watering powerful and revolutionary ideas and initiatives that can save our world. Black Flower's musical cross-pollination of sounds and rhythms remain on Future Flora, but there is still room for a more Western touch with Romanian and Maloya (Réunion) influences. Daems developed his own arrangements where Western, Oriental, and Ethiopian scales and chords are fused together to create a real mix of traditional instrumentation and modern electrical vibrations.

The strong underlying groove is omnipresent, but the room for psychedelics, folklore, and experimentation grows. Songs like "Hora de Aksum" combine modern western rhythms with doses of Balkan eccentricities while "Future Flora" takes you on a psych-delicious, 21th century, Ethio-dub-jazz trip with echoes of Mulatu Astatke and Fela Kuti.