Les Fleurs du Mal - Die Blumen des Bösen is the ninth album by darkwave

Darkwave

Dark Wave or darkwave is a music genre that began in the late 1970s, coinciding with the popularity of New Wave and post-punk. Building on those basic principles, dark wave added dark, introspective lyrics and an undertone of sorrow for some bands...

 band Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows, and was released in 2007. Anna-Varney Cantodea has explained that the title is not a reference to Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...

's 1857 collection of poetry of the same name

Les Fleurs du mal

Les Fleurs du mal is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857 , it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements...

, but that "it is related to Jean Genet

Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...

's novel Notre Dame des Fleurs

Our Lady of the Flowers

Our Lady of the Flowers is the debut novel of French writer Jean Genet, first published in 1943. The free-flowing, poetic novel is a largely autobiographical account of a man's journey through the Parisian underworld...

." A double vinyl edition and a CD boxed set were also released in limited quantities of 900 and 2,000 copies, respectively. The limited-edition pressings included a 40-page booklet of lyrics and illustrations, as well as a 112-page manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 about the album.

"In der Palästra" received release as a DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

-single, and the album proper was introduced and promoted via a promotional video.

Track listing

All songs written by Anna-Varney Cantodea, except where noted.

1. "Architecture (all that's erected are walls)" – 3:35
2. "Always within the Hour" – 8:29
3. "In der Palästra" – 7:13
4. "A little Bar of Soap" – 1:27
5. "Bitter Sweet" (Brian Ferry, Andy Mackay
   Andy Mackay
   Andrew "Andy" Mackay is an English multi-instrumentalist, best known as a founder member of the art-rock group Roxy Music....
   
   ) – 5:35
6. "Our Lady of the Broken Hearts" – 0:50
7. "La Mort d'Arthur"* – 3:01
8. "The Simple Joys of Maidenhood" – 3:42
9. "Helvetia Sexualis" – 10:08
10. "Les Fleurs Du Mal" – 8:29
11. "Shave, if you love me" – 6:50
12. "Some Men are like Chocolate" – 5:20
13. "The Virgin Queen" – 11:41

• "La Mort d'Arthur" is based on the German translation of a Swedish children's song, "Små grodorna
  Små grodorna
  Små grodorna is a traditional Swedish dance and song traditionally performed at midsummer, where the participants dance around the maypole. The dance involves movements that illustrate body parts that frogs lack, namely "ears" and "tails"...
  
  " ("Die kleinen Frösche")

Personnel

• Naomi Koop: Violin
  Violin
  The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
  
  
• Susannah Simmons: Violin
• Liz Hanks: Cello
  Cello
  The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
  
  
• Miriam Hughes: Flute
  Flute
  The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
  
  
• Andrew Piper: Clarinet
  Clarinet
  The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
  
  
• Mike Davis: Oboe
  Oboe
  The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
  
  , cor anglais
  Cor anglais
  The cor anglais , or English horn , is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family....
  
  
• Doreena Gor: Bassoon
  Bassoon
  The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
  
  
• Daniel Robson: Trumpet
• Fenton Bragg: Trombone
  Trombone
  The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
  
  
• Eugene de la Fontaine: Tuba
  Tuba
  The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...
  
  
• Bert Eerie: Drums
• Terence Bat: Drums
• Choir
  Choir
  A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
  
   of the Collegiate Church of St. Mary of Warwick
  Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick
  The Collegiate Church of St Mary is a Church of England parish church in the town of Warwick, England. It lies in the centre of the town just east of the market place. It is a member of the Greater Churches Group....
  
  : Vocals, backing vocals
• Anna-Varney Cantodea: Vocals, all other instruments and programming, Written lyrics and music