Early life Jarvis was born in
Toronto,
Ontario where he was a
Royal Canadian Air Cadet band leader and served briefly in the
Canadian Army reserve forces.
Career Jarvis worked in marketing in the 1990s at the major label
BMG in Toronto, Prague, Moscow, and Warsaw, and later for
Universal International in London, handling acts including
Nirvana,
David Bowie,
Dolly Parton,
Kiss,
Aerosmith,
Guns N' Roses,
Deep Purple,
Annie Lennox,
Patti Smith,
Malcolm McLaren,
Beck,
Sonic Youth, and
The Moody Blues, as well as
Death In Vegas,
Spectrum,
Spiritualized,
Cowboy Junkies and
The Wedding Present with whose members he would later collaborate as an artist. Previously he taught as a senior lecturer in the United Kingdom at
London Metropolitan University, and
Buckinghamshire New University. He wrote music related articles for the
Huffington Post from 2013-2018. The
Tate Britain gallery included Jarvis's
Come Hell Or High Water album cover adaptation of an
Aubrey Beardsley illustration in their Beardsley exhibition and catalogue, with
The Flowers of Hell performing at the opening ceremony, a few weeks prior to London's first coronavirus lockdown in 2020.
Musical history Prior to the
Flowers of Hell, Jarvis played on Prague's underground music scene in the 1990s, in Moscow rockabilly group Merzky Beat, "We stopped (The Red Stripes) when it started getting crazy big with
Peel, the
NME,
BBC6,
The Face,
Duran Duran and some peripheral members of
The Clash and
The Sex Pistols getting into it. We signed to a Universal imprint, met
The Wailers in a medieval fortress in Serbia, shot a video in Africa and felt we had to kill it before we became too known for it," Jarvis said reflecting in a 2015 Irish interview. Jarvis produced, composed, and performed on an album of
Northern Soul covers and originals by Emma Wilkinson, whom he managed after she won the 2001
Stars In Their Eyes TV talent series performing
Dusty Springfield's ‘
Son Of A Preacher Man’. He founded the
Flowers of Hell in London in 2002 as a studio project, growing it into a live group in 2005 recruiting bandmates
Abi Fry (later of
British Sea Power and
Bat For Lashes), Guri Hummelsund, Ruth Barlow, Steve Head, and Owen James. He returned to Canada in 2007 and formed another branch of the group, expanding its line up to encompass musicians living in both Toronto and London. and is its main guitarist. Highlights of the group's career include
Lou Reed of the
Velvet Underground praising their artistry and commencing his final radio show by playing three of the group's recordings, the
Tate Britain including their Come Hell Or High Water LP alongside
The Beatles'
Revolver in a 2020
Aubrey Beardsley exhibition and bringing the group in to perform at the opening, and
NASA's mission control staff declaring their enjoyment of the group's ‘space rock’ with the shuttle launch team syncing footage of a Discovery mission to the
Flowers Of Hell's ‘Sympathy For Vengeance’.
Synesthesia Jarvis has auditory-visual
synesthesia which causes him to involuntarily and instantaneously perceive all sounds as abstract visual shapes surrounding him. In 2013 he founded the Canadian Synesthesia Association as a way of meeting other synethetes and raising awareness of synesthesia.
Education Jarvis did summer studies under the octogenarian beat writer
Bobbie Louise Hawkins at
The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado. He also completed a master of arts in higher education teaching for which his thesis focused on how the mind processes music, and he holds an Arts & Media MBA. == Personal life ==