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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 with an unreleased song too! Superb!!!!!
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 honouring him as part of their celebrations. Kirchin wrote a number of albums for the de Wolfe Music library, working with fellow composers John Coleman & Jack Nathan to create some of the most sought-after and cult recordings.
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 lead to quite a few original film compositions. The music we are releasing here is Basil's work for the De Wolfe library, all from the 1966 period. Although you will imagine the music to be a little later, it's just that Basil is always a little ahead…
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 wrote with fellow John Coleman. A milestone in british avantgarde.
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 is one of the most important experimental and improvised jazz-based recordings of all time. Released in 1971 it sold just a handful of copies, but has become a keystone in the development of ambient sounds; originals now fetch £1000+. This is the firs…
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 the multi-talented and quite radical David Greene. Greene was also an actor, a successful producer and had already employed the services of Kirchin for his 1967 horror The Shuttered Room and quirky crime thriller The Strange Affair (1968). I Start Coun…
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 within the fields of avant-garde sound practice and experimental music - territories which, by their very nature, are resistant to genre, categorization, and definition, the impulse persists, allowing strange and singular free-standing efforts to slip…
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 Kirchin was a unique talent. A man brought up as a drummer in the post-war big band era, he soon shunned the sounds of London ballrooms for world travel, marijuana, and spiritual enlightenment. On his return to London in the mid-1960s, he started w…
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 artist behind seminal slabs such as Abstractions Of The Industrial North and Quantum. Far as we can tell, with thanks to Google and YouTube user Bernie Dolman, who claims to play bass on the track, Silicon Chip was written and produced by Kirchin, a…
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 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 finall…
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 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, …
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 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 rele…
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