Chancing upon Basil Kirchin's previously unissued album Quantum: A Journey Through Sound in Two Partsreleased on Trunk last year was like stumbling onto a briefcase full oflarge, unmarked currency. The densely structured combinations oftime-stretched field recordings, jazz improvisations and tenseatmospherics had that dreamlike, dark, subconscious quality that I hadpreviously attributed only to 1980's underground cassette heroes likeRoger Doyle and HNAS. Technically, Kirchin's works could be describedas musique concrete, but his unorthodox, hallucinogenic collages ofsquawking geese, autistic children and backwards-tracked saxophonesolos seem well beyond the spectrum of academia to me. The Quantum release was one of my favorites of 2003, and it led me to seek out Basil Kirchin's amazing soundtrack to The Abominable Dr. Phibes and his pair of early-70's experimental masterpieces, both entitled Worlds Within Worlds. With Charcoal Sketches/States of Mind, Trunk continues their schedule of unearthing never-issued works by Kirchin. The Charcoal Sketchesof the title are three brief instrumental improvisations, overlaid withthe now-familiar recordings of birdsong, slowed and mutated to resemblethe bellowing hoots of a wounded gryphon. This material was recordedduring the nascent period before the Worlds sessions, and itdoesn't share the same furious and unpredictable fieriness of the otheralbums. The musicians appear to be playing off of the mutatedbirdcalls, cautiously weaving through a sparse work of gentle radiance.At times, the smooth funkiness of the guitar and bass, mixed with theotherworldliness of the fluttering whoops and chatters, reminded me ofthe soundtrack to Fantastic Planet grafted onto In a Silent Way-era Miles. States of Mindis considerably more disturbing, a collection of nine briefinstrumental sketches each meant to illustrate a different mentaldisorder. This music was used in the soundtrack for a short film shownonly once at an international conference of Psychiatrists held in 1968.The title of "Plaques and Tangles" refers to the brain degenerationcaused by Alzheimer's Disease. The track begins in a chaotic swell ofcompeting neuron fires, and eventually digresses into a dark fog ofconfusion. Frantic evocations of mania and paranoia are supplied byEvan Parker's frenzied saxophone solos. My only complaint is that themost of these tracks are far too brief and fragmentary, with not enoughtime given to fully develop the tantalizing themes. Consequently, it'snot nearly as immersive and powerful as Kirchin's other works. AlthoughI realize that this is inherent in the original sources from whichthese brief sketches are drawn, I hope that Kirchin chooses to revisitthis material at some future point and weave it into the kind ofmasterpiece I know he is capable of. Read More
