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Basil Kirchin

In the 1940s and ’50s, Basil Kirchin played jazz, first drumming in his dad’s big band, then recording and ultimately leading it. Then in the late ’50s, he got fed up with his own music, went on a spiritually motivated trip to the South Seas, where he lost all his old recordings in a boat-loading accident. Thus, unencumbered by his own past, he embarked on a second and far more extraordinary musical career. Kirchin composed soundtrack music, mostly for documentaries and horror flicks, and in his spare time developed a wildly creative variant on musique concrete. While the disciples of Pierres Schaeffer and Henry fashioned compositions from the sounds of inanimate objects, Kirchin juxtaposed the voices of animals and the autistic kids that were in his wife’s care with the playing of free improvisers and rock guitarists.

In the 1940s and ’50s, Basil Kirchin played jazz, first drumming in his dad’s big band, then recording and ultimately leading it. Then in the late ’50s, he got fed up with his own music, went on a spiritually motivated trip to the South Seas, where he lost all his old recordings in a boat-loading accident. Thus, unencumbered by his own past, he embarked on a second and far more extraordinary musical career. Kirchin composed soundtrack music, mostly for documentaries and horror flicks, and in his spare time developed a wildly creative variant on musique concrete. While the disciples of Pierres Schaeffer and Henry fashioned compositions from the sounds of inanimate objects, Kirchin juxtaposed the voices of animals and the autistic kids that were in his wife’s care with the playing of free improvisers and rock guitarists.

Assignment Kirchin
Two killer scores by Basil Kirchin, both from the late 1960s, both unreleased until now. Assignment K - a spy film and The Strange Affair, a rather sleazy London crimmy underworld thing. Classic, jazzy, weird, the usual expected unexpected Kirchin wi…
Mind On The Run
Big Tip! Basil Kirchin, a forgotten genius of post-war British music, was an influential jazz drummer, creative free-spirit and pioneer of Musique Concrète. He spent most of his life living and working in Hull, the 2017 UK City of Culture, which is h…
Abstractions of the Industrial North
* Edition of 500 * This is music from one of Basil Kirchin's most creative periods. Basil had finished his world tour of weird discovery, and came back to the UK to make, in his words, music for imaginary films. This is basically library music, but l…
Mind on the Run
Basil Kirchin, a forgotten genius of post-war British music, was an influential jazz drummer, creative free-spirit and pioneer of Musique Concrète. Kirchin wrote a lot of albums, Mind on the run is one of the most representative Library record he wro…
Everyday Madness
A glimpse behind the curtains of Basil Kirchin’s archive, "Everyday Madness" commits nearly 40 minutes of concrète studio poltergeist and aleatoric psychedelic collage from a true original.
Worlds Within Worlds: Part I And II
Last copies, sold-out at source. Milestone. Edition of 1500 with 300 on gold vinyl; the LPs will be mixed randomly -- there will be no way of telling which color is which as all LPs will be sealed.Basil Kirchin's Worlds Within Worlds: Part I And II i…
I Start Counting!
Sublime unreleased score for the weird cult/brutalist thriller I Start Counting! (1970). Charming, odd, and affecting score by Basil Kirchin, made "in association" with his regular cohorts, Jack Nathan and John A. Coleman. The film was directed by th…
Worlds Within Worlds
Unwinding history - catching a glimpse of its truths, can be a near impossible task. There’s an understandable tendency to look in the obvious places, seeking generality and concise definition to guide the way. While this presents obvious paradoxes w…
Basil Kirchin Is My Friend: A Trunk Records Sampler
An awe-inspiring sampler of the late, great musical polymath's music. From pop punk pop to field recordings, jazz, horror film music, ambient sounds, experimental ideas and all points in between. Many tracks have not been released before. Basil Ki…
Silicon Chip
"So, who knew that Basil Kirchin - the ‘father of ambient music’ and a big influence on Brian Eno and Nurse With Wound - also recorded some freaky electro and disco zingers?! Patently Trunk did, and now cough up these tiny wonders from the pioneering…
Primitive London
LP version. 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 drum…
Particles
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 hi…
Quantum
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 b…
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