I started off by looking into library music – I was interested in the potential exploration of music made for an unknown final purpose being recontextualised in different ways. After discussing this with Kevin, he sent me a link to Jonny Trunk’s record label Trunk Records, where he finds and releases obscure music – everything from library music to unreleased film scores to forgotten moments in british music history.
Simultaneously, I was also looking at archival material from the BBC North West Film Archive, with the intention of developing a project based on my connection to both Liverpool and Manchester. I first came across Basil Kirchin through this intersection of research interests – whilst looking at the various releases on the Trunk Records website, I was drawn to Basil Kirchin’s album ‘Abstractions of the Industrial North,’ and from there delved into researching the rest of his life and work.
Kirchin was born in Blackpool in 1927, but spent his childhood and adolescence in London during WWII; he would play drums in his father’s band by day and sleep in air raid shelters by night. At 13 he was already an extremely accomplished musician, and the Kirchin Band started to gain popularity among both the public and fellow performers. Whist his father, Ivor, was in hospital after being injured in a car accident, Basil took over as the leader of the group. According to Mike Senn, former Saxophonist in the group, this was what led to the eventual creation of the jointly managed Kirchin Band:
“However in practice Basil found his first band, although small in number, extremely difficult to deal with, due to having to handle the day to day business management and at the same time continue to write his own music, which, being original, required many hours of rehearsal. This, together with Ivor Kirchin's return to fitness, resulted in the birth of a new idea — the creation of a jointly led big band to be fronted by Ivor, who would also manage all the business side, leaving Basil free to play the drums and utilise his creative energy in creating the music and perfecting its performance.” (source)
This new joint enterprise saw new levels of popularity and high regard. However, with a lot of questions about the world and how he saw it, and with the weight of burgeoning fame and his increasingly pressing ideas about expanded music, Basil travelled to seek spiritual guidance in India in 1957, years before doing so became a trend with musicians. After India came America, Europe and Australia. With his wife Esther, Basil arrived in Sydney Harbour in 1959, and only days later did disaster strike – all of his meticulously recorded tapes were lost to the sea due to an error in unloading the luggage.
During his years in the band, Basil was obsessive about recording every performance, rehearsal and sound check he could. The band were one of the few at the time to have their own PA system, which meant Basil could connect his own reel-to-reel tape recorder and get a very good quality sound. All of these years worth of recordings went with Basil on his move to Sydney, and after arriving in Sydney Harbour they were left with the rest of the luggage to be unloaded over the weekend. Unfortunately, something went wrong in the unloading process and Basil’s tapes ended up in the water.
According to a Jazz Professional biography from Sept 2000, “In effect the tapes were literally "his life" encapsulated for all to hear. They were with him on board the ship which arrived at Sydney harbour at about 5.45 on a Friday afternoon. The main luggage in the hold could not be collected until Monday so Basil went to the new flat. Monday late afternoon he got a very apologetic phone call from the docks telling him they were very sorry but, as the net containing the luggage was being swung over to the docks, something had snapped and everything had dropped into the sea. When they were eventually retrieved, full of water, they were left stewing over the whole weekend on the dockside instead of Basil being contacted immediately to see if anything could have been salvaged. Tapes, write–ups, publicity — everything was ruined. That was it — perfection gone, and only word of mouth now to verify.” (source)
This incident immediately struck a chord with me when I first came across it. The loss of an archive is always a tragedy, but this case in particular was so personal and specific that the imagery was immediately obvious to me. There was also a clear link between this story and my previous project, in the use of Gavin Bryars’ song ‘The Sinking of the Titanic,’ which explores the idea of soundwaves from the string quartet carrying through the water long after they had drowned. All of this research as presented here formed the bare-bones of my film.
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