Skullflower Bio

They were one of, if not the first, band playing the kind of freeform, bass-heavy, feedback-driven improv noise-rock favored by the likes of Earth, Sunn O))), Gravitar, Boris, etc.
They were a huge influence on Godflesh, who played dates with them before signing to Earache. Godflesh has also borrowed the occasional title from songs by Ramleh and other Broken Flag cassette artists -- an obscure homage, perhaps? (Note, too, that Skullflower's INFINTYLAND was released on Godflesh guitarist Justin Broadrick's short-lived HeadDirt label. Now you know why it's so fucking hard to find, right?)

Their various lineups have included members of Ascension, Terminal Cheesecake, Whitehouse, Total, Ramleh, Breathless, Coil, and other bands of note.
Guitarist Gary Mundy (aka Gary Ramleh), who played in both Ramleh and Skullflower throughout the band's early years (and now plays in Breathless), is notable also for having established the Broken Flag label, which put out important vinyl releases such as the NEUNGAMME compilation, albums by Gioncarlo Toniutti and Toll, and the first two full-length Skullflower releases, the self-titled ep (aka BIRTHDEATH) and FORM DESTROYER. Broken Flag's cassette label (over seventy releases) includes early releases by the likes of Ramleh, Controlled Bleeding, MB, Con-Dom, Gioncarlo Toniutti, Total, and compilation appearances by such artists as the New Blockaders and Le Syndicate.
Philip Best, sometime collaborator live and in the studio with Skullflower in its later years (and co-conspirator in Ramleh during Mundy's jaunt with the band), is not only a floating member of notorious power-electronic godfathers Whitehouse, but also ran a cassette label called Iphar in the early eighties that released early material by significant power-electronic bands like Ramleh, Sutcliffe Jugend, SPK, and Consumer Electronics.

The band and its members have been hefty contributors to the recorded output of the UK in the last couple of decades of the twentieth century. We're talking literally hundreds of releases, ranging from pure noise to freejazz improv (with lots of fuzz and drone and sheer volume in between), a great many of them genuinely brilliant.