The founder of Trunk Records, a label for musical misfits and curiosities from the past, discusses his upcoming releases and more...
You're releasing some recordings by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's John Baker which sound pretty exciting. You describe them as insane. What kind of insane? Insane in the way it was made — hours, possibly weeks cutting, splicing and re-recording fragments of sounds, taking days and days to make eight seconds of music. Work intensive, masochistic methods of working. Sonically it’s all mad, crazy blips and blops all mixed up with blaring sax, tunes made using just a cider bottle, I could go on...
Did you know John Baker? No, he died in the mid 1990s. But I feel I know him now.
How long have you been into this BBC Radiophonic stuff? Ever since I first saw Dr Who.
Are you the only one releasing that material now? Yes, at the moment I am the only one. There was a reissue of old Radiophonic albums by Rephlex about five years ago, and a Dr Who retrospective on Warp a couple of years ago. This is the first major retrospective of anyone from the workshop.
I’ve heard that this is a hard time for record labels, what makes you want to do this? Wouldn’t it be easier just to have a big record collection? I have a big record collection. And yes, it’s a hard time for record labels but at the moment I remain unaffected. I only operate in a small, niche market, and the buyers in that market want quality music they haven’t heard and good packaging, and they seem to be growing in numbers. Well that’s what I think.
Hmmm, more people buying obscure, quality music. Sounds promising... I think it’s known as the ‘long tail’ effect.
What’s that? Since the advent of the internet everyone all of a sudden has more choice. Before the internet, you’d go into your local HMV and look at the shit stock they had, stock based on what major record companies were selling them, each store focusing mainly on this major label output and really that’s all they would be prepared to stock. Put this in graph form and you have a small amount of product selling a vast amount, and not a lot else — you have a graph with a big peak, and that’s about it.
Fast forward to these days, and no longer do the discerning record/CD buyers need shit shops like HMV. They go on the internet and a whole musical world of joy is now open to them. They can order the most obscure releases and they arrive the next day. Joy of joys. Nowadays the consumer has the choice, not the shop. This has resulted in the same vast amounts of musical sales as before, but spread over a huge amount of product. The graph you’d draw has a peak at the beginning — just like before — for all those Coldplay and Madonna albums, but then a massively huge long everlasting tail on the graph as more and more musical consumers become aware and start purchasing music from intriguing musical genres and niches that were obscured to them before.
Is it important to you that your releases are British? Not really, as long as the music is interesting and beautiful then it doesn’t really matter. The latest album, Hear, O Israel, by Herbie Hancock, was recorded in New York.
More Trunk Records releases
Do you like much new music? A little yes, but I’m so entrenched in old music it gets difficult to find the time to listen to both.
When you do listen to new music, what music do you like? Just been listening to a new compilation called We Are All Circling The Stars, newish singers, folky things — and you can’t beat an evil bit of techno every now and again. On my listening pile at home is also the new Jason Spaceman soundtrack to that Harmony Korin film. Excellent it is too.
What kind of people buy your releases? All sorts of people buy my releases — teenagers to pensioners, both here and abroad. I think good music is ageless. I had one of the DJs from Saga radio — a music station for pensioners — email the other day. Thrilled he was with Music For Biscuits. And then this morning a young nutter from Israel sent me some mental new music he’s made. I think he’s 26. 
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