Trunk Records - History

History

Initially, the label was set up as a means to release material from the Bosworth Library archive, the oldest existing music library. Since then, the label has adhered to its mantra of "Music, nostalgia and sex", and established itself as a label popular amongst film and TV fans as well as record collectors. It has also become infamous for its records associated with the 1960s and 1970s soft pornography such as the soundtrack to Deep Throat, Flexi-Sex (a compilation of flexi-discs from 1970s British magazines), Mary Millington Talks Dirty and Dirty Fan Male, an album based on Jonny Trunk's own experiences organising various glamour models' fan clubs including that of his sister, Eve Vorley. The album contained amusing recitals of the fan mail they received, and was later turned into an award winning live show and a book. Jonny Trunk has also released his own material through the label, including his album, The Inside Outside. Since 2003, Trunk has been responsible for the rediscovery of Basil Kirchin, by releasing his unknown 1960s experimental jazz and soundtrack work. The label has also been responsible for issuing the UK's rarest jazz album, "Moonscape" by The Michael Garrick Trio. Recent work has included a release of "Noise Art", the recordings found in the studio of late British underground film maker and artist Jeff Keen.

Various Jonny Trunk side projects have included directing the now banned pop video, "Plug Me In", for Add N To (X). This video was shot in Wales, and was edited as the standard pop version and a longer, more controversial Add N To XXX 45 minute version. Trunk has also held modern music and movement classes for children using vintage electronic recordings, issued official Tony Hart Vision On tee shirts and screenprints, ran action painting sessions to Ken Nordine's colours, and regularly finds music for advertising, film and TV. He also writes for Vice, Record Collector, and Mojo. Jonny Trunk is also a regular broadcaster on London's art radio station Resonance FM. His radio show "OST" has concentrated on film music, TV music, library music and related recordings and is the only show of its kind on British radio. It has championed the work of François de Roubaix, Roger Roger (composer), Krzysztof Komeda and many other obscure international soundtrack artists. Other recent broadcasting has included the BBC Radio 4 documentary Into The Music Library and presenting on BBC Two's The Culture Show. Jonny Trunk is the only dedicated film music DJ in the UK.

Harper Collins published the Jonny Trunk book Dirty Fan Male in 2004. It subsequently became a Channel 4 documentary. Working with art publishers FUEL Design, Jonny Trunk published the world's only book dedicated to the graphic art of production library music. This book, known as The Music Library, was the first book to bring to the public the hidden art and design of vintage library recordings. This was followed up, in late 2010, with the world's first overview of the life and early publishing work of John Sutcliffe, the underground leather couturier who started AtomAge. 2011 saw the publication of Own Label, Sainsbury's Design Studio 1962 - 1977. This book brought together a vast array of own label packaging developed and designed by the supermarket's in house studio. Conceived by Jonny Trunk and based on his memory of the 1975 Own Label Cornflake packet, the book brings some 400+ rare, period and often curious designs from the Sainsbury's Archive into the modern graphic world. Trunk's latest publishing venture was to license the document and letter archive of Mary Whitehouse, and subsequently sell the idea of a book based on it to Faber and Faber. The book "Ban This Filth" was the result.

"The Ladies' Bras", a single by Jonny Trunk and Wisbey, made number 70 on the UK Singles Chart in August 2007, and re-entered at number 27 in September 2007 after a campaign by BBC Radio 1's Scott Mills. At 36 seconds long, it is the shortest track ever to chart in the top 30.

Trunk also features frequently in the 2011 book Retromania by Simon Reynolds: "Cheezy sleaze and sepia –toned melancholy seem unlikely bedfellows at first glance. But in his 1935 travel book Journey Without Maps, Graham Greene put his finger on or near the place where musty and lustful meet. He wrote about how ‘seediness has a very deep appeal…it seems to satisfy, temporarily, the sense of nostalgia for something lost; it seems to represent a stage further back.’ With their aura of wistful reverie and faded decay, the sounds exhumed by Trunk offer a portal into Britain’s cultural unconscious."