Stars In Battledress - In Droplet Form CD
SKU
BR 015
Even though he released it and it might be considered 'cheating' by some of this world's harshest critics, this is Kavus' favorite album of 2014.
"Stars In Battledress is a British duo. Brothers Richard and James
Larcombe write and perform delicate, otherworldly songs for harmony
voices, piano and electric guitar. They've performed and recorded
together and individually with William D Drake and the North Sea Radio
Orchestra, but they began creating music together in childhood,
ploughing an isolated furrow with hundreds of private cassette
recordings. Initially they created collages from classical, folk and
film and television music, crudely re-edited, reversed or slowed down,
then learnt to perform and re-record the results, adding vocals and
removing recognisable elements of the sources. In their twenties they
rediscovered these "songs" and began to write new material in the
style of what they heard. "In Droplet Form" is the second collection
of this material.
The music of Stars In Battledress is uniquely English but never
whimsical, poetic but never pretentious, defiantly unusual but never
contrived, complex but never flash, trippy and dreamlike but with
hardly a whiff of the sixties. Contradictions all, but in their
precise, delicate music everything is where it should be. There are
hints of Erik Satie, Syd Barrett, The Incredible String Band, Cardiacs
and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, but their style is truly theirs
alone. There's something lonely and distant about it, but there's
warmth and charm in their fragile world, and a gentle humour in the
lyrics.
Despite the small forces this is a very varied album. "Hollywood Says
So" is a lively acoustic stompalong, and "Hunt The Button" piles
layers of hurdy-gurdy and tape hiss into a haunting farewell to
cassette. The Larcombes even "rock" on TKS2, with unison voices
hovering over a blaze of looped distortion which evokes something of
their surprising forcefulness as a live act. From the fluttery delay
and stretched vowels of "A Winning Decree" to the ghostly chimes of
"The Women From The Ministry", the album gives off the musty air of a
cobwebbed music room, and listening to it is like pressing a puzzled
ear to the wall."
- LabelBeliever's Roast
- UPC5060331226420