Add Basil, Stir Posted over 5 years ago
http://www.jazzprofessional.com/profiles/BasilKirchin.htm(Interruption for side note:)http://www.myspace.com/shawnleemusicI was checking out Basil Kirchin info on the web, and I stumbled across Shawn Lee on MySpace because he's into Kirchin. Anyway, oh my goodness --- i love this music!! What a great boost for my mood today!So, anyway, back to Basil. You can hear some of the music at www.pandora.com --- you'll have to log in and create a station, but it's worth it. I like Pandora.The following is copied and pasted from Yahoo Daily CD, FYI.November 17, 2006Abstractions of the Industrial NorthBasil Kirchin 1966 "In the late '50s, British drummer-composer Basil Kirchin's New Kirchin Band was one the most popular big bands in England, backing Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan and collaborating with future Beatles producer George Martin. But at the height of the group's popularity, Kirchin grew tired of the creative restrictions of the big band format and dissolved the group to spend several years traveling the world. When a lifetime's worth of his obsessively documented live recordings was accidentally dumped into the Sydney Harbor, Kirchin's relationship with traditional jazz effectively ended. Kirchin's return to England in 1961 found him focusing on strange and beautiful instrumental miniatures intended for use in film and TV, many of which are collected on Abstractions of the Industrial North.Recorded for the De Wolfe music licensing library, Abstractions of the Industrial North sounds like incidental music for an imaginary movie that nobody intended to make. Visual accompaniment or not, each of Kirchin's miniatures carries with it a sense of cinematic wonder. The galloping "Conclusion" could play beneath the opening credits to a thrilling adventure flick-bass, drums, vibes, and harpsichord play interlocking polyrhythms over an expansive mellotron chord, and a soaring soprano sax melody alights on clouds. Close your eyes, and you're flying. "Where to Go" starts out in a noirish crime film, with spaghetti Western guitar and low sax intoning a spooky theme, while flutes spiral ever-downward like blood trickling down a staircase. But one swooping harp arpeggio later and the dark alley becomes a majestic castle hall, with trilling flutes, pounding drums, and a full complement of brass blaring out a sensual processional for the royal newlyweds.Much of the album has a soothing, almost pastoral feel to it, thanks to the jazz harmonies and modal improvisations that gird so many pieces. But Kirchin's not afraid to explore the seedy underbelly of his Industrial North, spiking the rest of the album's sweetness with eerie harmonies and off-kilter arrangements. A herky-jerky mishmash of harpsichord, piano, low sax, and tom drums clomps along dissonantly on the aptly named "Heavy Machinery," while the drunken blues boogie of "Lunch Hour Pops" pits a honkin' alto sax solo against a wheezy church organ and tinny harpsichord vamp. It's on these numbers that we get a glimpse of Kirchin's experimental streak, which would soon lead him to make music out of taped environmental sounds, birdsong, and the manipulated voices of autistic children. But on Abstractions of the Industrial North, Kirchin challenges in more approachable ways, crafting a fantastical soundtrack to our most vivid daydreams."
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