Reconnaissance Fly: Flower Futures

The story of Flower Futures began in 2009, just as the band had completed its transformation from the benevolent dictatorship—Polly Moller & Company—to the democratic Reconnaissance Fly. Polly had begun collecting the best Internet spam poetry, aka “spoetry,” she could find, and proposed a concept album setting 10 of these “spoems” to music. Each member of the band was given spoems to set, and five years later, Flower Futures is the result—showcasing the band's versatility and each member’s unique compositional style.

Chris Broderick: c-melody saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet
Amanda Chaudhary: electric piano, piano, organ, electronics
Polly Moller Springhorn: voice, flute, bass flute, heat sink
Larry The O: drums, percussion
Tim Walters: bass, computer

Falling somewhere between jazz and Canterbury prog rock, Reconnaissance Fly juxtaposes the silliness of the lyrics with serious musical chops and strong compositions. A fun and engaging release.—Mike Borella, Avant Music News

This enterprising group is a precision machine.… Other than the ensemble’s razor-sharp focus and highly synchronized methodology, a great deal of wit and whimsy propagates an attainable and irrefutably entertaining succession of events. —Glenn Astarita, All About Jazz

...The result is the kind of peculiarity you might expect if Kurt Weill, Alfred Jarry and Frank Zappa got together and wrote a musical starring Mrs. Miller...Recommended for buffs of the bizarre. —Steve Mecca, Chain D.L.K.

It’s full of Canterbury sounds: electric piano, jazzy chords, and stumbling time signatures. Snatches of free improvisation crop up here and there. And flute! In addition to fronting the band with operatic alto vocals, Moller plays flute alongside the band’s woodwind or guitar leads. —Memory Select

They have that warm, slightly dark SoCal sound, especially from Amanda Chaudhary’s keyboards, Rich Lesnik’s woodwinds, and Larry the O’s cool ride cymbal techniques. Moller’s got a great voice, too, somewhat operatic in an Irene Aebi sort of way, and her flute soloing, if somehow bottled, could provide heat to the homeless dudes sitting outside of the space. A really fine melding of brain and brawn from these flyers! —disaster amnesiac