Abstractions of the Industrial North - The Dawn of Electronica

Few albums are as remarkable as this. Basil Kirchin was an accomplished big-band musician, with great technical vision, and in the 1960s he decided to turn his attention to the future of music. In 1966 Abstractions of the Industrial North, which is as much jazz as electronic, was recorded for the De Wolfe Music Library. Only 500 copies were pressed and it then lay almost completely unavailable until, in July 2003, Jonny Trunk (of Trunk Records) met someone who had found a perfectly preserved copy of the original recording in a charity shop in Birmingham.

In 2005 it was re-released by Trunk Records; the entire Abstractions of the Industrial North plus, as a bonus, another nine library tracks from around the same period in 1966/7. On one of these, 'Pageing Sullivan', the session drummer is Jimmy Page - who slightly later was to become much better known!
The new release, by Trunk Records, became available on CD in 2005. It still is available from amazon.co.uk etc. and I highly recommend it. There was also a vinyl release (JBL012LP), limited to just 400 copies, and that is now surprisingly expensive. Amazon.co.uk market place currently lists two copies - one at £49.95 and the other at £69.95 - I love vinyl and therefore to own one is a real pleasure and the image at the top of this post, and taken for this purpose alone, is of one of those 400 copies.