There's something to be said for making music where the sole purpose is to satisfy the makers rather than pandering to notions of winning over a target audience.
When Animal Collective's Panda Bear recorded Young Prayer in 2004 his guiding principle was to make a personal tribute for his late father. There seemed to be no obvious desire to reach out to any specific listeners. Mark Richardson noted in his review for Pitchfork that this LP "will doubtless disappear and be rediscovered periodically as years pass".
'In Droplet Form' is a very different project to Young Prayer but it has the same quality of a private record which has evidently not been conceived with mass consumption in mind.
What we hear has its roots in a childhood game when Richard and James Larcombe experimented with compositions by creating cassette tape musical collages.
The possibility that the LP will end up being lost without trace is all but acknowledged by its creators in the video for A Winning Decree. In this, the two brothers set up and play in an empty social club and shrug resignedly at the empty seats when the show is over.
Not to be missed in this video is the laugh out loud moment when. at 4:24, Richard Larcombe strikes a rock star pose as though he were playing the power chords for a heavy metal combo rather than accompanying his kid brother on harmonium.
The Larcombe's first album - Secrets And Signals - was slightly more conventional in the sense that most songs had a definable structure although they were still too wordy to be accurately classified as traditional folk or straight rock.
The best of this follow up release uses vocal harmonies with a distinctly hymnal quality. While they have gone on record as not wanting to be associated with prog-rock the obscure pseudo literary content of a track like Unmatchable Bride is bound to draw comparisons with the two Peters : Hammill and Gabriel.
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At the same time, on the song Buy One Now the lyrics seem to be lifted from banal advertising copy as though the sound of the voices is more important than the meaning of the words.
There's plenty of dry humour too. No Glory No Gain lists all the rewards of fame they undoubtedly will not achieve: "drive fast cars, win prizes, girls in every port".
The original Stars In Battledress (SIB) were entertainers whose role was to boost morale for the armed forced during the second World War. Quite who these SIB will entertain is anybody's guess but they don't appear unduly concerned either way.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed - take note that these English eccentrics will not be to everyone's taste.
Quirky it may be, but this is also music is full of heart and soul and for that we can be truly thankful.
Stars In Battledress' website
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