[15] 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,[16] handling acts including Nirvana,[17][18] 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.
[19][20][10] Jarvis also worked as an executive at the BBC's Top Of The Pops[16][19][20] where he conducted interviews with such acts as the Spice Girls, Queen, Alice Cooper, Depeche Mode, Oasis and Radiohead.
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.
[34] 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.
[43][44][45][46] Jarvis did summer studies under the octogenarian beat writer Bobbie Louise Hawkins at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado.