Basil Kirchin

Born in Great Britain in 1927, experimental composer Basil Kirchin launched his professional career in December 1941 by drumming for his father Ivor’s jazz ensemble at London’s Paramount, where the group maintained a wartime schedule of fourteen performances each week through the close of World War II. Once hostilities ended, Kirchin moved to Harry Roy’s newly established New 1946 Orchestra, one of Britain’s earliest authentic big bands, and reached a national audience through its recurring BBC radio broadcasts. Near the end of the decade he joined the Ted Heath Big Band, then widely regarded as Europe’s leading ensemble of its kind; in 1952 he returned to London to establish his own outfit, naming his father co-leader and assembling trumpeters Tony Grant, Stan Palmer, Bobby Orr, and Norman Baron, saxophonists Ronnie Baker, Duncan Lamont, Pete Warner, John Xerri, and Alex Leslie, pianist Harry South, bassist Ronnie Seabrook, vocalist Johnny Grant, and arranger John Clarke. The band opened on September 8 with a year-long engagement at Edinburgh’s Fountainbridge Palais and followed in November 1953 with an extended booking at Belfast’s Plaza Ballroom that lasted into spring 1954, simultaneously serving as backing unit for singer Ruby Murray throughout a thirteen-week Radio Luxembourg series.

In mid-1954 Ivor Kirchin sustained critical injuries in a car crash, prompting Basil to attempt leadership alone; lacking business acumen, he eventually disbanded the group. After Ivor’s recovery the pair formed the New Kirchin Band, a larger ensemble comprising four trumpeters, four saxophonists, and three percussionists whose rhythmic, brass-heavy style departed from conventional big-band jazz and quickly attracted listeners; within ten months the unit placed fourth in a Melody Maker poll of Britain’s most popular groups. Following four singles and an EP for Decca, the band moved to Parlophone and worked with future Beatles producer George Martin, while also becoming the first British ensemble to carry its own public-address system; Basil routinely taped every rehearsal and concert, preserving celebrated performances behind Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan. Feeling restricted by the big-band format, however, he dissolved the lineup at the height of its popularity in 1957 and spent subsequent years traveling, with prolonged visits to India and the United States.

Upon reaching Sydney for an intended two-year Australian sojourn, Kirchin inadvertently left nine hand-edited 7-inch reels—containing only the finest material from the Kirchin Band’s five-year existence—aboard his vessel; days later dock authorities telephoned to report that the reels had fallen into the sea during unloading and were irretrievably lost, leaving only studio recordings to represent the group’s legacy. Kirchin finally reached Britain again in spring 1961, abandoned conventional jazz, and began collaborating with engineer Keith Herd on electronic pieces intended for nonexistent films, soon receiving commissions to score actual motion pictures, television programs, documentaries, and stage productions. In 1964 he initiated the World Within Worlds method, layering conventional instruments with wildlife recordings and amplified insect sounds, then meticulously editing and transforming the results into strikingly unfamiliar yet evocative sonic environments that foreshadowed Brian Eno’s later ambient work and the output of subsequent electronic artists such as Aphex Twin. Only after Swiss manufacturer Nagra released advanced tape machines and microphones in 1967 did Kirchin possess equipment capable of realizing his ambitions fully, allowing source material to grow ever more unusual and tape manipulations increasingly radical as he uncovered previously inaudible “inner sounds” at nonstandard playback speeds.

While supporting these experiments through soundtrack assignments that included 1967’s The Shuttered Room, 1968’s The Strange Affair, and 1971’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Kirchin refined the World Within Worlds approach and issued an album under that title in 1971; a sequel appeared two years later, accompanied by liner notes from Eno. Corporate interference undermined both releases, leading a disillusioned Kirchin to accept additional film and television work to finance equipment for his personal projects. No further material surfaced for decades until 2003, when the Trunk label released Quantum, a piece integrating live contributions from Evan Parker, Darryl Runswick, Kenny Wheeler, and Graham Lyons with ambient field recordings and voices of autistic children; the two-fer Charcoal Sketches/States of Mind, the latter originally composed in 1968 for a psychiatric conference, appeared shortly afterward.