Basil Kirchin
England's Basil Kirchin is a fascinating composer. Starting off his career in traditional jazz bands and as a composer of film soundtracks, he would then go on to create some of the strangest electronic compositions you're likely to hear. Even though other artists have worked with tape loops before and after him, no one has done anything that sounds like his work. Using mostly recordings of autistic children (his wife worked with them in Switzerland) and animals, he would manipulate the sounds and have them play alongside real instruments in an attempt to blur the distinction between the two! The results are often quite chaotic, sounding like something between extreme free jazz and complete insanity. Add to that a few background melodies and you wind up with an absolutely mesmerizing (and very bizarre) audio experience.
Kirchin has made many such recordings but most of them (with the most coveted one being Worlds Within Worlds - Part 1 & 2) remain unavailable still today. Only now, shortly after his death has interest begun to bloom once again. This is in part due to the fascinating article in Wire magazine where Alan Licht interviewed the dying composer just a few months before he would succumb to the cancer which had been plaguing him. Soundtracks had been released around that period (the most famous being The Abominable Dr. Phibes) and unreleased and rare recordings (Quantum was the first example of his tape loops works)... but the world is, as of this writing, still waiting for the release of the aforementioned, four part Worlds Within Worlds.
QuantumLabel: Trunk Records Release: 2003 Format: CD Cat. no: JBH 003CD |
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