Astoria, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/17/2010 -- The Mad Cavalier mocks and teases. Sometimes it boasts and threatens. It will always grab you.

The album takes the classical styles of progressive rock, with its vocal harmonies and big sounds, and fuses them with the exciting edge of today’s alternative bands.

Think of what King Crimson or The Moody Blues would sound like if they were reincarnated as Phoenix or The Fray.

The songs run the gambit, from the dark mood of menace, to playing lightly with the unhappy costs of getting shafted in love.

Ethelred is the creation of Kim Holmes and Sherryanne Sooknanan. Guest artists join them on the album but most of the music was created by Holmes and Sooknanan.

The opening number, Borgia, plumbs the depths of one of history’s biggest egos, asking: “Do you have the nerve to soar this high”? The giddy heights of its opening chords descend into a dark, military-like slog in the middle. But it ends where it began, only now the arrogance is a lament.

Whys and Wherefores is music as cinema. It combines “soundscapes” with heavy metal and techno interludes, asking “why” would anyone ask so many questions when the answers are so obviously simple?

The song after which the album is named is The Mad Cavalier. It takes on the theme raised by Borgia”, only less darkly: If, like the Prince after which it is named, we are all fools of the “merry chase,” then why not be fools in a grand style?

The Mad Cavalier can be purchased as downloads at Apple iTunes, Amazon MP3, Napster, Deezer and CD Baby (http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/Holmes1) and as a physical CD at CD Baby. It can be sampled at: http://www.myspace.com/holmesmadcavalier

Email: kimsmithholmes@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.jukeboxalive.com/kimsmithholmes