Formed in a Manhattan art gallery, electronic experimentalists Silk Flowers – Aviram Cohen, Ethan Swan, Peter Schuette – make music which is artful but uncategorisable, and have released on No Age’s Post Present Medium label. Think Throbbing Gristle, Suicide or Joy Division remixed by Gary Numan and then played in a wind tunnel: both frightening and frighteningly good. Cohen attempts to explain himself.

How did the band form?

Peter and I met working in a big art gallery called Metro Pictures. We started a band called Soiled Mattress and the Springs which was more of a proper band, more about musical ideas, but I realised I wanted to move into a realm where I was being conceptually expressive.

How so?
One of Peter and I’s real commonalities was a liking for krautrock bands like Neu!, Cluster and Harmonia, so that’s the kind of music we decided to make. I used to make experimental music on my own and I was interested in returning to it, but in a less abstract and more approachable way, with pop elements. It’s not like we work stuff out on guitar or piano, though, we don’t write with chords. It’s simpler than that, what we do is very sound based.

How is the name related to that?
It’s an interesting representation of what we do. It’s a synthesised object which is supposed to represent beauty, but may not. It might just be a little bit cheap.

Cry Parrot at the 13th Note, Glasgow, Thu 22 Jul.