Trunk HHV Records 10 Items

Recently discovered lost and unissued score by Basil Kirchin to wild surreal freak horror movie from 1974. Plus bonus unissued spooky TV score with groovy Eastern vibes.

So, here we are again, with more super sounds from the Basil Kirchin archive. As usual, it’s a shame Basil is not here to share in our love for his music or to fill us in a bit on who was playing what, when and why.

I can tell you for sure that the music for The Mutations dates from 1974, and was the score to the bizarre Jack Cardiff film starring Donald Pleasence and Tom Baker. It’s a pretty freaky film with Pleasence playing the part of a deranged scientist genetically crossing humans with plants, and ultimately causing all sorts of unpleasant issues for everyone, including the makeup department.

As for Journey Into The Unknown, this is a tape from the archive with just “Journey Into The Unknown” written on it and very little else. This dates from 1968, and is from a series of spooky British TV dramas with supernatural twists and the occasional American guest star, like Barbara Bel Geddes, Stefanie Powers and Roddie McDowell. Seems like a forerunner of Tales Of The Unexpected. There were 17 episodes in all over a year and a half, and Basil scored two - Episode 7 The Madison Equation and Episode 11, The Indian Spirit Guide. Other composers drafted in for scoring duties throughout the run included David Lindup, Bernard Ebbinghouse and the ubiquitous John Scott. There is no theme here as the series used a whistling one written by the Scottish composer Harry Robinson that was used throughout the series. Robinson had previously worked on TV shows such a Six-Five Special and also went on to write the music for Twins Of Evil for Hammer.

The score we have here from the two episodes comes as a series of vignettes and longer more experimental cues that dip into Kirchin’s music vocabulary (or bottom drawer) and will be oddly familiar at times to anyone with an ear for his brilliant past work. Thrilling to hear it all now, like staying hello to Basil all over again. Brilliant.

Assignment K (with lots of pencil scribbles everywhere). The Strange Affair (with lots of pen scribbles everywhere).

As usual with Basil tapes / things there is little else to go on, no tracklist, no list of musicians, no singer names, no dates or anything. I have actually tried to establish the name of the singer on the song from Side One (we have called it “Love Is To Walk Away “ as it is unnamed) but having played it to a handful of knowledgeable collectors and enthusiasts who I would count as experts in this field, no one has a clue who it might be. If you think you know please get in touch. We know who it isn’t.

We can tell you that Assignment K dates from 1968, was a film about a toy maker who has a double life as an international spy. It was directed by Val Guest, who’d just finished trying to rescue the cinematic hotchpotch that was Casino Royale - he had been brought in by the Bond producers after Peter Sellers had walked off the movie. We imagine Assignment K may have been a slightly less stressful few months of shooting. As for the Kirchin score that we have here, we can tell you very little indeed, apart from the fact that the bass player was Ron Prentice (an ex blacksmith turned musician and craftsman) who worked on several Bond scores, but we know little else. And we only know this because it says so in the academic tome “Jazz On The Screen” by David Meeker.

The Strange Affair is also from 1968, and was not only controversial but also a reasonably unsuccessful movie. Directed by David Greene who also directed, amongst other films, I Start Counting and the quite brilliant Sebastian. In this rather grubby flick a policeman called Peter Strange (played by Michael York) falls for an underage girl (played by Susan George), finds himself compromised by a pair of pornographers and gets lured into an errand for a smack gang. We can tell you little else because I have no more information about it all.

But we do know that this music has all the classic Kirchin mid-period sonic hallmarks that have always set him apart.

This is THE FIRST EVER commercial vinyl release of the classic folk horror score, presented in an incredible pop up Witchfinder sleeve!
For many, this is the long LONG awaited score that completes the “holy trinity” of folk horror: The Wicker Man, Blood On Satan’s Claw, Witchfinder General. And all these albums were first commercially found and released by Jonny Trunk. This is the first time Witchfinder General has been commercially released on LP (previously only available as a mega rare 1973 library LP or withdrawn CD!). As well as the superb Matthew Hopkins / Vincent Price pop up, the gatefold sleeves feature stills from the classic film, plus comprehensive notes about the film production history and the music. This is just the package the folk horror fans really want. This is the first pressing, if there is a second it will not come with the pop up sleeve.
Classic pastoral, melodic and scary music.

First ever release of the scariest, most inappropriate and possibly most influential kids TV music of ALL Time. There is only 17 minutes of music throughout the series, so we have fitted it all onto a one sided LP. Artwork is by Julian House – legendary hauntologist (Belbury Poly etc) and the man behind some of the greatest spooky band artwork of all time- Stereolab, Broadcast, Primal Scream etc etc. Sleevenotes by Stewart Lee and inner sleeve notes by Alan Gubby of Buried Treasure Records. It all looks and sounds superb. Of course it does because it’s a Trunk Records release.

Limited Repress With NEW (original) Artwork. Legendary privately pressed 1979 LP from Scotland. This illusive, super rare and sublimely wonderful percussion album is like no other. Hypnotic, celestial, even cosmic and ambient in parts and totally unique in all ways, it was played by a group of 11 girls with an average age of 14. The group included Evelyn Glennie, who was destined to become one of the world’s greatest percussionists. This is her first ever record. The Cults Percussion Ensemble was a group formed by percussion teaching legend Ron Forbes in the mid 1970s. The ensemble must have one of the best group names of all time. To many it will immediately come across as something sinister, a touch spooky and possibly a bit dramatic too. They are certainly two of those but the use of the word “Cults” here is easily misinterpreted. Cults, in this case, is the suburb of Aberdeen. The average age of the students was just 14. They came from a few of the schools in the area, including the Cults Academy, Ellon Academy, Aboyne Academy, Inverurie Academy and Powis. My original copy of the album came from Spitalfields market in London. I loved the music the second it started, because it reminded me of Carl Orff and peculiar library. So I started to investigate it further, and eventually, thanks to the highly tuned world of percussion, was given the address of Ron Forbes. I got in touch with him and now we have this, a formal release of something quite lovely that was only previously available very briefly in 1979 at concerts when the young girls performed. The music here is really quite unique, with a celestial swirling hypnotic quality. The blend of glockenspiels, xylophones, vibraphones, marimba and timpani drums is quite intoxicating and can recall the shimmering warmth of the desert sun one minute (“Baia”) or freezing glacial ice caps the next (“Circles”). The Ensemble perform with an effortless tightness and deftness of touch, building textured layers with recurring percussive motives which appear simultaneously dense and yet sparse, almost sounding like modern sampling. In fact, while struggling to find a musical comparison, during the pulsating introduction to "Percussion Suite" I found myself recalling "Gamma Player", a piece of soulful Detroit techno minimalism from Jeff Mills (Millsart - “Humana” EP 1995) with its rhythmic percussion layered with complex emotion. Weirdly enough, other tracks on that EP also prominently feature xylophone and tuned percussion, although obviously synthesised and programmed, a good 20 years after the CPE first recorded. Sleevenotes also include a letter from Ron Forbes: “I decided to form a percussion group to provide an outlet for my percussion pupils to play music specially written for them. The group soon became well known in the region and as a result of winning the outstanding award at the National Festival of Music for youth on three occasions, they were invited to play at other festivals within Europe, one being in Erlangen in Germany - hence the Erlangen Polka - and Autun in France - hence the Autun Carillon. During these visits we were often asked if we had any recordings and so it was decided to make an LP”. Thanks to Ron Forbes and Trunk Records, more people can now enjoy the simple hypnotic musical charms of the Cults Percussion Ensemble

The rarest of all exotic LPs, like Eden Ahbez but with extra added death. This bizarre, rarely heard masterpiece brings together jazz, ancient manuscripts and a convicted murderer. Issued originally in 1959 it originates from Pheonix, Arizona. The concept behind the recording was unusual - to brings together two unconnected worlds: the jazz genius of Buddy Collette with the academic oriental studies and translations of A.I Groeg. Little can be found of A.I. Groeg, But before the LP was recorded A.I Groeg had translated several Polynesian and Japanese manuscripts. These form the basis of the dark narrations and lyrics across the album. Sublime vocalist Marni Nixon (the voice of Maria in West Side Story) was brought in for two songs and fledgling actor Robert Sorrels (now a convicted murderer) supplied the strangely unsettling and almost otherworldly narration.

In 2001 Jonny Trunk started working with Oliver Postgate and his Smallfilms archive. The first music issued was the unreleased music from all 26 episodes of The Clangers. To create the soundtrack all music was originally “drawn” by Oliver Postgate – sketched out in graph form on the original scripts. This was then translated by his good friend and regular musical collaborator Vernon Elliott into the music we know and love. It was all recorded in a village hall in Kent in the late 1960s and released originally in 2001 by Jonny Trunk (cat number SOUP 001), garnering a mass of fine reviews inclsuing a full 5 stars from The NME!. Listening today these recordings have lost none of their naivety and charm, and the Clangers soundtrack remains a seminal work of both TV and intergalactic musical history.

close to NM

Incredible jazz / prog / folk score to groundbreaking tattoo film by maverick filmmaker. Unreleased until now, so don't go saying it's a reissue because it isn't, but I'm sure some people will because they always do.

John Samson (1946 - 2004) was a truly great documentary maker. He must be as I've been obsessed with his work for many years. Educated first at Glasgow School Of Art (circa 1963) and then finally in the art of film making at The National Film And Television School in Beaconsfield - he headed there in its opening year of 1971 having made a short film that got him a scholarship.

It was at the Nfts that Samson met Mike Wallington, who was to become his right hand man and eventual producer; together as a quite brilliant team they made a handful of inspiring, entertaining and hugely prescient films about important, overlooked, unseen and marginal fringes in society.

Tattoo (1975) Exploring the rather clandestine world of tattooing in the UK. Dressing For Pleasure (1977) Exploring the rather clandestine world of festish in the UK. Brittania (1979) A film about railway enthusiasts and a steam train restoration. Arrows (1979) The life of dart player Eric Bristow. Drag Ball (1981) An unreleased film about the annual Porchester Hall Drag Ball. The Skin Horse (1983) Bafta winning film about The Outsiders Club, a dating agency for disabled people.

The subject matter in all films was always unusual for the time, and Samson managed to navigate his way with compassion, interest and subtlety, immersing himself in the chosen scene and producing moving, fascinating and sometimes darkly amusing situations. His documentaries also do not rely on traditional voiceovers, with stories, facts and narrative threads being dictated by the subjects.

I've tried for a long time to find the music for a couple of his early films (there was actually an original 7” for Arrows) - so far this is the only unreleased soundtrack I have found. This one was written by Steve

Jolliffe, who met Samson at the Nfts. Joliffe was the resident composer and had a room at the college complex where he could work on scores for the fledgling film makers. Jolliffe was and still is a multi-instrumentalist and prolific composer who had met Edgar Froese at the Berlin Konservatorium in the late 1960s and played in an early incarnation of Tangerine Dream. He toured with blues rock outfit Steamhammer, before hanging out at the Nfts, making this recording (and many others) and eventually rejoining Tangerine Dream in the late 1970s. Jolliffe still writes, records and releases today and once i had made contact with him we traced the original Tattoo master tape to a box at his brother's house. Musically it's charming, slightly folky, a touch baroque, there's a whiff of prog too, and it perfectly suited this early documentary about the art and desire of tattoos. I only wish it was longer. But the film is only 16 minutes long. Seek it out if you can. Try and find all the Samson films, they really are a joy.

As well as featuring intimate footage of tattooed people, the film also includes a rare and very early interview with Alan Oversby (better known as Mr Sebastian), a seminal character in the development of tattoos and body modifications worldwide - it was he who eventually was to tattoo and pierce Genesis P-Orridge.

The images for this vinyl release were all found in Mike Wallington's Tattoo documentary research folder from 1974, and were photos sent in to Mike and John by people who wanted to feature in the film. Most answered an advert in Time Out, and others included people from my home town of Aldershot where tattooist Bill Skuse and his wife, Rusty (the most tattooed woman in Britain at the time, and featured in the film) were based. His parlour was situated at the back of the arcade where we all used to lose all our pocket money in the slot machines.