Sound
Stars In Battledress draw strongly on traditional folk sources (most obviously in their use of folk instrumentation such as harmonium and autoharp, and in the specifically English inflections of Richard Larcombe's singing voice), 1990s American art rock (such as Don Caballero) and the complex "psychedelic mediaeval" music of the related British bands Cardiacs and The Sea Nymphs. Though the band have displayed a reluctance to be associated directly with progressive rock, the complexity of their music and the use of expansive keyboard textures have sometimes seen them labelled as a progressive rock act: Richard Larcombe's distinctly English tenor delivery has sometimes seen him compared to Richard Sinclair (Caravan, Hatfield and the North, etc.).
Stars In Battledress are also notable for Richard Larcombe's literate and allusive post-modern lyrics, which span traditional topics such as love songs and social advancement while also cross-referencing more unusual subjects such as silent film, doppelgangers, historical figures such as Havelock Ellis, the English landscape painters Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable and the work of the Canadian hard-rock band Voivod (sometimes incorporating several of these subjects within the same song).
Read more about this topic: Stars In Battledress (band)
Famous quotes containing the word sound:
“A person is far more likely to appear to have sound character because he persistently follows his temperament than because he persistently follows his principles.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“He hath a heart as sound as a bell and his tongue is the clapper, for what his heart thinks, his tongue speaks.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)