Basil Kirchin - Assignment Kirchin (Two Unreleased Scores From The Kirchin Tape Archive)

Charming, symphonic late ‘60s lounge jazz instrumentals by Hull’s finest turns up for the first time on Trunk, replete with a standout bonus song

‘Assignment Kirchin’ catches the drummer turned bandleader turned film score composer and avant-garde explorer in his jazzy heyday, following his travels in India, and prior to producing blueprints for experimental ambient music. The first half’s ‘Assignment K’ soundtrack depicts Kirchin at his most opulent and debonaire, yet making room for subtle experimental flourishes and the funk in the likes of his spy funk sequence on track 6, the sleazy suss of track 9, and a standout bonus song featuring uncredited vocalist and surely paralleling work by his jazz idols on the other side of the Atlantic.

In the 2nd half’s ‘Strange Affair’ soundtrack Kirchin stretches his experimental legs with a natural embrace of modal and spiritual jazz motifs and arrangements across its nine tracks of swelling strings, free flutes and sophisticated Afro-Latinate rhythms that most beautifully underline the swirl of ’Strange Affair 2’ and swarm and dither on ‘Strange Affair 5’, or laced into something like an opulent precedent for minimalist NYC sorts Arthur Russell & Peter Zummo or Steve Reich in the ‘Strange Affair 7’ cue.

Tracklist:

1. Assignment K Track 1 
2. Assignment K Track 2
3. Assignment K Track 3
4. Assignment K Track 4 
5. Assignment K Track 5 
6. Assignment K Track 6 
7. Love Is To Walk Away 
8. Assignment K Track 8 
9. Assignment K Track 9 
10. Assignment K Track 10 
11. Strange Affair Track 1 
12. Strange Affair Track 2 
13. Strange Affair Track 3 
14. Strange Affair Track 4 
15. Strange Affair Track 5 
16. Strange Affair Track 6 
17. Strange Affair Track 7 
18. Strange Affair Track 8 
19. Strange Affair Track 9