Trunk Television

...... 28 minutes and two seconds of televisual wonder.  Thank you Mr. Trunk!!!!!!!

Suxo Plexo Muxo Mix

Few vinyl archaeologists dig deeper than Andy Votel and when he suggested A Sound Awareness host this mix I was pretty much 'dancing on the ceiling with joy'. Originally aired on Jonny Trunk's OST Show on Resonance FM in March 2013, 'Suxo Plexo Muxo' features a zoned out mix of Eastern European cinematic oddities, weird eye Giallo schlock, Parisian art house freak folk and a plethora underexposed and uncharted celluloid wonders from around the world which will send even the most avid sound collector scouring the crates for years to come.

As always, hats off to Finders Keepers and Trunk Records for the kind permissions. Artwork remixed by myself and Mr. Votel using a few of the rather fine images on display here.

Dig, delve and enjoy!

Suxo Plexo Muxo Mix

Tracklist 
from Pan Kleks - Andrzej Korzynski - (Polton Poland)
from Anna - Gainsbourg Columbier (INA France)
from Belladonna Of Sadness - Masahiko (Finders Keepers)
from Chi - Goblin (Cinevox IT)
from Phantasm - Myrow Seagrave (Verese Sarabande)
from Sitting Target - Stanley Myers (FK)
from Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders - Lubos Fiser (FK)
from La Salamander - Patrick Moraz (Evasion Ch)
from Morgiana - Lubos Fiser (FK)
from Nightmares Come At Night (The B-Music Of Soledad Miranda) - Bruno Nicolai (FK)
from Divertissements - Louk De Book (Cache Cache)
from When Love Becomes Lust - Morricone (Cerberus)
from Daisies - Jiri Sust / Jiri Slitr (FK)
from Saxana - Angelo Michajlov (FK)
from Kama Sutra - The Inner Space (Crippled Dick)
from Lilith - Bruno Spoerri (Cache Cache)
from Pan Kleks - Andrzej Korzynski (Polton Poland)
from Naturally Free - Avenue (Apla Aus) 
from Blood On Satans Claw - Marc Wilkinson (Trunk)
from The Innocents - Isla Cameron (FK)
from Qui êtes vous, Polly Maggoo? - Michel Legrand (AZ)
from The Cremator - Zdenek Liska (FK)
from Fascination - Phillippe D'Aram (FK)
from Stone - Billy Green (FK)
from Sweet Movie - Manos Hadjidakis (Sonopresse)
from Mad Monster Party - Maury Laws (Rankin Bass)
from Honest Blue Eyes - Berndt Egerbladh (CBS)
from Saxana - Angelo Michajlov (FK)
from When Love Becomes Lust - Morricone (Cerberus)
from Danger Diabolik - Morricone (Disobediente)
from S.O.S - Andrzej Korzynski (Disposable Music)
from Zwolf Im Langstrasse- Bruno Spoerri (Cacophonic)
from Man Of Marble - Andrzej Korzynski (Cache Cache)
from Snakes - Suzanne Ciani (FK)
from Holy Mountain - Frangipane Jodorowsky (Abcko)
from Outland - Jerry Goldsmith (MCA)
from Tulipan - Andrzej Korzynski (Cache Cache)
from Kiu - J Pagan (PDI)
from Varadhu Vandha - S. Janaki and Iliayaraaja (FK)
from De Sade 70 Trailer (The B-Music Of Soledad Miranda) - Bruno Nicolai (FK)
from All The Colours Of The Dark - Bruno Nicolai (FK)
from Three Nuts For Cinderella - Karel Svoboda (Supraphon Cz)
from Zwolf Im Langstrasse- Bruno Spoerri (Cacophonic)
from Hausu - Godiego (Columbia Japan)
from Jeunes Filles Impudiques - Pierre Raph (FK)
from Pastoral - JA Seazer (RCA Japan)
from Agilok & Blubbo - The Inner Space (Wax Wah)
from Takin Off - Bobo Bates (Decca)
from Nightmares Come At Night (The B-Music Of Soledad Miranda) - Bruno Nicolai (FK)
from Girls In The Sun - Stavros Xarhakos (EMI Greece)
from Senza Motivo Apparente - Morrricone (General IT)
from Cul De Sac (Matnia) -  Hank Jones & Oliver Nelson (Impulse)
from Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders - Lubos Fiser (FK)
from Mala Morska Vila - Zdenek Liska (FK)
from Anna - Gainsbourg Columbier (INA France)

Cults Percussion Ensemble

Here's another delightful recording which has just popped through the A Sound Awareness letterbox. This time, an oddly beautiful compendium of tuned percussion music, wonderfully played by an ensemble of Aberdeenshire school children. All twelve tracks were recorded and issued privately in 1979, with financial support by Grampian Regional Council and Aberdeen Educational Trust, with the resultant lp to be sold at concerts while the ensemble toured the United Kingdom, Germany and France. In my many years of scouring charity shops, jumbles sales and early morning carboots I've never even had a sighting of this elusive gem and I have a sneaking suspicion that many a proud 'Granite City' grannie or grandad have multiple mint copies sitting underneath their beds waiting to be bequeathed to future generations as precious family heirlooms. The copy I acquired came via a rather odd Yorkshire antique dealer who liked to send records in recycled pizza boxes. Luckily, the aforementioned pizza boxes hadn't been used prior to delivery. The recording itself is very peculiar, combining child like exotic percussion flourishes and eerie, swirling sound tones, all beautifully played with a melancholic innocence only youth can muster. Years ago, when I first heard this record, I instantly thought of Jonny Trunk. It's like the perfect Trunk record and it seems fitting he's decided to reissue it. What's not to love, there's spectral vibraphonic glissando, impish flourishes played on glockenspiels, proto hip hop drum breaks played on timpani drums and fourteen year old musicians conjuring all sorts of weird little shimmering sound shapes of sonic wonder on every composition. It's very enchanting stuff indeed. I should probably also mention that the record features a fourteen year old Dame Evelyn Glennie and a rather fine beige sleeve, which according to the sleeve notes, Jonny Trunk decided was too beige for a contemporary audience. I guess he's right. Head over to Trunk HQ to find out a little more.

Refined Lard

Bless the postman, for he has delivered another rather peculiar collection of unreleased musical oddness curated by that fine fellow, Jonny Trunk ..... and rather wonderful it is too. It's got the all the usual ingredients, kooky strange jazz, beautiful otherworldly sounds, strange electronic scores, children singing, odd OSTs and of course the rather dulcet warbling of Rolf Harris. Lovely. I think he's only pressed a few, they're cheaper than chips, not for sale via his website for a month or so and once they're gone, they're gone. So if you'd like to nab a copy I'd maybe try to bend his ear here.

The Little Folk

Jonny Trunk sent me this little recording for my breakfast. It features school kids cutting a folk strum rug in Petworth in 1966. An oddly enchanting acetate which sounds as if it was recorded in the room next door or maybe the room next to that one. It sounds weirdly psychedelic. Oh and before you get all shirty, he gave me permission to share.

The Seasons Drama Workshop

Trunk Records come up trumps again with a stellar reissue of this rare and strange recording from 1969. I blogged about this sinisterly odd children's 'classroom drama' record a while ago and for those that missed the review and download I suggest you head over to Trunk HQ and avail yourself of a brand spanking new vinyl copy. In my quest to find this elusive gem, I searched through endless carboots, second hand stores and jumble sales for well over six years. Hopefully this little post will make finding your own copy a little easier. The reissue contains a wealth of insightful linear notes by Jonny Trunk and Jon Brooks, an interview with composer David Cain by Julian House and the wonderful reproductions of slides by artist Judith Bromley [see below], which the BBC invited teachers to buy and use in conjunction with the recordings. A very peculiar and worthwhile release.

The Seasons by David Cain is released by Trunk Records on the 20th February

Way Of The Morris

More good news! My favourite purveyor of esoteric soundtrack recordings, Jonny Trunk, has started a new label called OST with the sole aim of releasing some of the more interesting proponents of contemporary film music out there. The first release on this new label is Adrian Corker's original soundtrack for Tim Plester's award winning documentary about the much ridiculed tradition of Morris dancing entitled “Way Of The Morris”. The film is a charming meditation on the curious role of folk traditions with contemporaneous culture and despite this rather oblique subject matter, the soundtrack is a wondrous mix of restrained electronics and ancient instrumentation and very much worthy of your attention. Utilizing field recordings from rural England, the music documents a strange and wonderful meeting place, where the sound of bells and whistles, voice and tradition, sticks and rushes blur and decay into a radiophonic otherworldliness. It is a weird mix indeed as shimmering glacial electronics elide into eccentric Moondog rhythmic patterns, joyous Bacchanalian reverie eerily echoes then dissolves into playful folk melody to suddenly side step into deeply meditative and cavernous melancholic disquiet creating an intoxicating amalgam of rural sounds. Compositionally, the soundtrack is both rich and emotive in tenor and style and wonderfully captures many of the contradictions of the preserving village green tradition within an industrial society. An utterly charming, idiosyncratic and very worthwhile release.

The "Way Of The Morris" soundtrack is released on OST on November 21st.

Rising Stars

...... delighted to see that this is finally getting a release in a nifty new bag although I do have a certain soft spot for the rather splendidly 'stiff upper lip' 1964 sleeve.

Own Label - Sainsbury's Design Studio

Here's a little publication I'm all excited about.  It's not quite as odd as the last Fuel/Trunk records collaboration but I'm sure it'll be interesting. It's a book about supermarket graphics. Who would of thought Lord Sainsbury was a fan of the International Style.  Who would of thought Whole Wheat Bisk could look so typographically alluring. The book contains 208 pages of sexy packaging.  Here's a few samples. If graphic design is your kink, you're going to be a happy person. I know I will be. Many thanks to Jonny at Trunk Records for the rather wonderful scans. Own Label - Sainsbury's Design Studio 1962 -1977 is published in September by Fuel.

The MMs Bar Recording

Having just completed the production of a spoken word recording of my very own, my curiosity was much piqued by this rather strange and everyday oddity coming your way via Trunk Records. It also presented me with the slightest of excuses to post this rather attractive and inspired  logo by Gerald Burney of Design Research Unit. 

Primitive London

Trunk Records continues to unearth and delve into the shadowy world of lost cinematic soundtracks with the release of a rather curious and oddly elegant score to a 1965 exploitation flick entitled “Primitive London”. The film itself, is a wonderfully unique and peculiar piece of British exploitative post war cinema. Filmed on a shoestring budget, with the sole intention of getting the punters in, this bizarrely engaging film by maverick director Arnold L. Miller is a strange and heady mix of skin flick, mondo exploitation and social documentary. The film sensationally combines sordid titillation, everyday banality and the downright bizarre, think boobs, bums, bikers, suburban swingers, beatniks, cheeky East End villains, glamorous showgirls, chicken processing plants and the latest developments in hair replacement surgery and you get the idea. Despite its best attempts to appear scandalously sensationalistic, the film captures a strangely peculiar pre-permissive Britain which is neither salacious nor shocking. The film proclaimed to scratch the thin veneer of respectability to discover a hidden world of crime and suppressed sexual desire waiting to vent but in reality what is presented is an oddball montage of schlock and tease, a second-rate, tawdry tour of the commonplace. Despite this, it’s a wonderfully engaging yet oddly surreal film but ultimately at the end of the show you're left with the feeling that the strippers depicted are not the only people who have ripped something off. This makes the accompanying soundtrack by composer Basil Kirchin even more remarkable in that the score is neither sensational nor sordid but a masterpiece of curiously elegant arrangement and compositional refinement. It’s beautifully haunting score which both compliments and transcends its cinematic setting. The music is gracefully rhythmical and shifts across a wide variety of moods and tempos while still retaining a singular and unique voice. The soundtrack is an unusual mix of baroque minimalism, cool post bop jazz, spectral orchestration and electronic experimentation which defies simplistic categorisation, an oddball one indeed. Like the score, Basil Kirchin is a bit of an oddity. He apparently spent five months in a Ramakrishna Temple in India a decade before it became fashionable. In the early sixties he created experimental “soundtracks for unmade films” using collaged ambient sounds and if this all sounds a bit Eno before Eno, he could also confidently compose in a bizarre range of musical styles and idioms. How he happened to become involved in scoring music for the nefarious and seedy underbelly of British cinema remains a mystery, perhaps a true meeting of the sublime and the ridiculous. This soundtrack is yet another meticulous reclamation of a hidden musical past by label owner Jonny Trunk and if the world is a just place, his residence will have a Blue Plaque promptly installed to commemorate his significant contribution to a very peculiar kind of cultural and musical archaeology. A fascinating and strangely beautiful release.

“Primitive London” is released on Trunk Records this month.

Nowhere To Go

Just a little post to say that the ever wonderful Jonny, of Trunk Records is giving away this rather nifty jazz film score EP (free, yes that's right, free) when you subscribe to his mailing list.

Nowhere To Go was a 1958 London crime flick starring a young Maggie Smith and if this soundtrack is anything to go by, the film may also be worthy of your attention.

"Have a listen anyway, it's a curious thing and has some good bits, especially the crazy drum cowbell thing." Jonny Trunk

Tokyo Sonata

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Tokyo Sonata" is a filmic masterpiece of unsettling domestic tension. The premise of the plot revolves around a family's impending financial ruin after a middle-aged company man is abruptly fired from his well-heeled Tokyo job. Every morning he leaves the house dressed in his coat and tie, and spends his days roaming the urban environment [which typically in Tokyo indicates 4,000 inhabitants per square kilometre] in search of work, leaving his family unaware of their socio economic plight. The film’s tone is typified by the wonderfully eerie and pastoral score by Kazumasa Hashimoto.  The score contains a few tracks which typify what only can be described as ghostly electronic folk music.  Here is a "Unten Take 1" but I recommend you seek out the entire score as soon as possible.  Another wonderful Jonny Trunk tip!

Mr. Trunk Presents Atomage

If you've been wondering why this blog has gone all kinky of late you can blame it on Jonny Trunk.  I've been nagging Jonny for ages to write something for the blog.  Jonny is a very busy chap and he's been busy with all kinds of projects, but being the top bloke he is, he came up trumps to write a short and informative piece on all things rubber and vinyl.  For those that don't know, Jonny runs Trunk Records, a curious record label that specializes in unearthing forgotten and often neglected cultural gems ranging from cult soundtracks, jazz and the odd graphic design book.   This post is about his new book project and here it is in all its slightly kinky and perplexing glory with a few images provided by Jonny.  Over to you Jonny.....

"Now before we continue, I'm not kinky or nuffing. But the first time I saw an Atomage magazine at my friends house I got very excited indeed. I first spotted the magazine in the workshop of artisan leather workers Whittaker Malem. They make clothes for the movies and for Allen Jones sculptures. The magazine caught my eye, the woman in the front was looking the wrong way. After a quick flick through I realised that all of the photos in the magazine were peculiar but in a way I'd find hard to describe. The art direction was paired back, inventive and different. I started investigating this strange little publication more; there were at total of 32 made. The man behind the magazine, John Sutcliffe, was an extraordinary self taught designer with a natural flair for strange fashion and quite a knack with a camera. He started out by making biker suits for lady pillion riders, and by the mid 60s was making bespoke leather wear for a large roster of discerning clients. The A5 sized magazine was published erratically from 1971 (until about 1979) with the idea of selling his designs to a wider audience, but quickly became portal through which strange, fledgling scenes started to congregate. Macintosh clubs, wading, mudlarking and mask wearing all appear in the magazine, mainly through readers writing in and explaining what they were up to. Their stories and associated photography all add to the publications unique madness. But when someone describes their experiences of getting dressed up from head to toe in leather and then covering this all up head to toe in waterproof rubber, then slowly wading out into a river and standing there up to their neck in water for a couple of hours, you can kind of see the odd pleasure this might give you. Now where are my wellies..."

Here is a link to an excerpt of Sutcliffe and friends from Dressing For Pleasure, a film made about Atomage in 1977. It's a brilliant film made by a great director called John Samson.  The film also features a young Malcolm McLaren pre Sex Pistols.

"Dressing For Pleasure" will be published at the end of September by Fuel Publishing.

Tortura - Sounds Of Pleasure And Pain

Here's an odd record.  Basically it's a recording of people screaming, moaning, crying, groaning and laughing while being whipped.  It was released in 1965 which is odd in itself.  What is even odder is that some people will pay a lot of money to own a copy.  I wonder if that slightly kinky Jonny Trunk has a copy.  I bet he does.

Golding Institute - Sounds Of The San Francisco Adult Bookstores

This is a decidedly odd record.  I really have no idea why I purchased it.  It's a recording of San Francisco Adult Bookstores.  As a listening experience it's a bit rubbish but I still can't bear to throw it away. Maybe, one day, I'll donate it to my local charity shop.   I bet it will make someone very happy when when they find it.   There's a whole series of these discs including "Sounds Of The American Fast Food Restaurants" and "Sounds Of The International Airport Restrooms".  I bet they sound rubbish as well.  Oh, and I nearly forgot, this one came with a free tissue.  

Something Slightly Kinky

Jonny Trunk has been working on an odd little book project.  It's all very hush hush, that is until next week.  He mailed me a sneak preview about two months or so ago.  It's all very kinky and dare I say it, rather odd.  When I buy a copy I might have to ask for a plain brown paper bag to put it in.  Anyway, I'll be posting his article on Monday and you'll all just have to wait till then to find out.  In the meantime, here's a few 'kink cards' collected from another rather odd and kinky book called "The X Directory" published by Pi34 Publishing in 1993.  If memory serves me right, Pi34 Publishing was run by the rather fine Irdial Recordings who made quite a few 'wonky' and 'off kilter' techno records.