If you’ve not seen Primitive London (chances are, that’s a no), the legendary Basil Kirchin’s score is pretty much all you’ll need to conjure up images of a movie that the British Film Institute’s Vic Pratt and William Fowler tell us in their sleevenotes features: “Re-enactments of Jack The Ripper murders rub[bing] shoulders with sweaty men in sauna baths. Topless swimsuits jostl[ing] with footage of swans on a lake.” True to Trunk’s aesthetic, Kirchin’s long-lost six-part score for the 1965 “mondo” flick (a sub-genre best described as “taboo-breaking exploitation (mock) documentary)” is a little bit romantic, a little bit scary, a lot super-rare and totally fascinating.
Though Kirchin would further refine and complicate his work in the ensuing decades (best exemplified on other Trunkhelmed releases such as Quantum), this, his first foray into soundtrack scoring, is a wonderful piece revealing his trick bag to be well and truly full as early as the mid-60s. Just as a piece so reminiscent of the Taxi Driver score it’s scary (and 11 years before Bernard Herrmann’s work) is pulling you into blissful reverie, Kirchin shifts gear into a martial drum pattern and dog-high tonal squalls that make you want to crawl up into a ball and roll yourself to the nearest exit.
Ever treating Kirchin’s work with the respect it demands, Trunk has also added the complete, unreleased score for 1971 Brit-flick The Freelance. Free jazz and a remarkable artistic progression sees Kirchin embrace a new convoluted melancholy, with beams of light breaking through as the composer enters his pastoral Charcoal Sketches phase.
