Browse by Artist: KIRCHIN, BASIL

Artist:	KIRCHIN, BASIL
Title:	Quantum
Label:	TRUNK (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	JBH 003CD

First issue of this archival recording, originally recorded in 1973. "This is not a reissue. This is the first Basil Kirchin recording released for thirty years. Format: CD and very limited vinyl (500 numbered copies) release. Although there hasn't been a Basil Kirchin release for over 30 years, his reputation is still intact as being one of the most innovative and influential composers of the late 20th Century. This release is possibly his finest hour. It's certainly his weirdest. His last releases, in 1971 and 1973 are both rare and highly influential. This is the man who discovered a new way of listening and a whole new sound --with his unique mixture of jazz and field recordings he became a key influence in the development of Brian Eno's famous ambient works, and also a major influence behind the industrial movement of the mid seventies, for bands like Nurse With Wound. However his influence does not stop in the seventies -- bands such as Broadcast are now citing Kirchin as an influence. Constructed in the early 70s, Quantum was spliced together by Basil using jazz, field recordings (animals, insects. trains), his wife and autistic children. Artists involved include the hugely important Evan Parker, Darryl Runswick, Kenny Wheeler and Graham Lyons. The result is a very different and occasionally harrowing journey through sound. Beautiful and often extraordinarily dark, imagine an early 1970s version of the Aphex Twin mixed with a bit of Bjork."

Artist:	KIRCHIN, BASIL
Title:	Abstractions of the Industrial North
Label:	TRUNK (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	JBH 012CD

Soundtrack to a film that doesn't exist, recorded in 1966! Reissued for the first time. "The complete album Abstractions Of The Industrial North is on this recording, and we have added a selection of recordings from other rare Kirchin, Jack Nathan and John Coleman productions, including 'The Wild One', 'Don't Lose Your Cool', 'Town Beat' and finally 'Mind On The Run'. These are all ten inch De Wolfe releases, are exceptionally rare and includes some incredible session musicians, including Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan. As library music goes, Abstractions is unlike any other recording. It's possibly the most beautiful but worst library music ever made, in the way that it doesn't adhere to or follow any normal library music genre. It is wonderfully sad unforgettable music, with the signature Kirchin hypnotic grooves stirring it all up every now and again."

Artist:	KIRCHIN, BASIL
Title:	Particles
Label:	TRUNK (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	JBH 021CD

For the last five years Trunk Records have been issuing the great, lost work of pioneering British composer Basil Kirchin. Here is his last album, completed only a couple of weeks before he passed away in late 2005. It proves that Kirchin, even in his mid-'70s, was still very much an experimentalist at the top of his odd game. Kirchin invented ambient music and set the template to which much of today's avant garde music sounds like. Highlights of Particles are many -- "The Atonals" for example, was made using conversations between musicians that Basil had secretly recorded over the years. These conversations were then processed into music and the results are quite startling. In fact, the whole album is brimming and bursting with odd ideas, new ways and the unique Kirchin sound. The current Trunk favorite is the last, epic ten-minute hypnotic monster simply called "E+Me." It's an obvious homage to his dear wife Esther, who actually sings at the end of this heavily rhythmic, modal tune. Tragically, Esther died a week before this last Kirchin CD was pressed. Particles adds further fuel to the glowing Kirchin legend, and increases his standing up there with all the other groovy weirdos of the world.

Artist:	KIRCHIN, BASIL
Title:	Primitive London
Label:	TRUNK (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	JBH 038CD

This is the first-ever release of not ONE but TWO classic Basil Kirchin soundtracks, one from 1965, the other 1971. It's music for strippers, wife-swapping, death, birth, crime and chicken factories. Basil Kirchin is a legendary jazz drummer and grandfather of ambient music. He started his jazz career drumming in his father's jazz band. In the war years, he took over the band and post-war travelled to the East, hung out with the Maharishi, found himself, moved to Australia and finally returned home to the UK in the early 1960s with jazz ideas the likes of which no one else had ever dreamt. He moved into film music composition, library music and special commissions. By the late 1960s, he was experimenting with free jazz, tape manipulations and animal recordings. His series of works entitled Worlds Within Worlds are the first examples of ambient music. Regarded as a musical genius by many of the world's current music geniuses, Basil Kirchin's influence and following grows and grows each day. No one knows how and why drummer and jazzman Basil Kirchin came to write his first-ever soundtrack, but the sounds he created for Primitive London and its images of abattoirs, strip joints, alcoholism, beatniks and peculiar supermarkets are second-to-none. The music is film music but with touches of jazz, drones and oddness, impressive for such an early recording. There's even a tune surprisingly similar to Herrmann's Taxi Driver, a score written over a decade later. Primitive London is notorious as the UK's first and most important "Mondo" movie. The images filmed were strange, sensational, shocking and sleazy, the music harrowing, groovy and hip. This short, and until now unreleased score is accompanied on this release by a soundtrack Kirchin wrote six years later, for a very different kind of London film. Called The Freelance, this rough, tough crime flick is rarely seen, but features lively performances by classic British character actors and a young, impressive Ian McShane. Set in the criminal underworld, Kirchin brought to the screen the sounds of progressive drumming, free jazz and a touch of new decade optimism. The cues are long, develop well and are like no other. Both scores represent important times in Kirchin's musical life; the first score pre-dates his library work, the second comes at a time when this master of modern jazz music and industrial sounds had reached a creative peak. Both scores are unmistakably Kirchin, with his instant, insistent rhythms, memorable melodies and distinctive, strange jazz sounds permeating this entire release. His ever-growing band of fans will love it all. Superb full-color sleeve taken from the original 1965 Primitive London press book. CD comes with a 12-page color booklet with a history of the film, original rare film stills as well as notes by Jonny Trunk and the BFI.

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