THE MAGIC INTERVIEW 01-13:

THE KEV TRUNDLEY EXPERIENCE

KT: How much shopping? Ha! Loads and loads and loads…. Difficult, where to start, as the people who you leave out might end up getting offended!  

MM: Yes, we WILL!

KT: There were various gems I discovered… the psychedelic swirl of Sponge, the techno montage of Cabbage Head, The Pagan Stomp of the O’Roonies and the trance heads of Ozric Tentacles; the nihilist noise onslaught of the Grey Wolves and Con-Dom,  the gothic ambience of Saffron Dreamshadow, the post-punk individual exentricico of Howl In The Typewriter; the cheery pop blasphemy of Christ! The self effacing thrash metal of Wat Tyler, the lysergic aural overdose of the Ceramic Hobs; someone called Magic Murmurs at Twilight Time I think, the French wild man of punk, Costes, the porno-a-go-go noise of Smell & Quim, the acid angst of Viktimized Karcass, the extended head jams of Alien Planetscapes – all of ’em still well worth checking out. Thanks to the beauty of the net, there are a few blogs like No Longer Forgotten Music and DIY Or Die (gone now - MM) that still unearth some of these mainly tape-based gems. And, of course, let us not forget the labels and distros that were uncovered – excellent sounds from Insane Music in Belgium, Strength through Awareness in Salisbury, Better Days Distribution in Glastonbury, Irre Tapes in Germany, Harsh Reality in the States. Also check out the amazing Living Archive Of Underground Music from US Underground legend, Don Campau. (Whose is that face glaring at me from the little window on the left!!?)

KT: Yes – I still remember that first letter from you, where you said you had been sent a flyer with a picture of a funny little man on it, and I wrote back and said it was supposed to be a self-portrait! How did the Trundley Experience start? – Well, from a long term interest in music I guess – I had quite narrow tastes in the 1970s looking back, with a lot of space rock and prog rock on the turntable – Amon Duul, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, Van der Graaf Generator, Hawkwind and King Crimson were big faves – but swapping home made tapes with mates certainly broadened my horizons and introduced me musically further afield to discover the likes of the Butthole Surfers, The Smiths, Stump and the Pixies. I had been into graphics and comix for an equally long time, and had started to get work published in an underground comic over in Belfast, called Blast! In the second issue featuring my work, they put out a list of recommended contacts in the Underground – that lead to me getting in touch with Trev Ward of the Grey Wolves (still going), Felix Hansen of Sicky Spread Tapes (now defunct), Stan Batcow of Pumf Tapes (still going) and Sean Worrall of the Organ, the amazingly encyclopaedic fount of contact for the Underground (now defunct) – from then on it was network network network, listening to more and more different types of music,  making more and more contacts. After a brief spot working in a local record shop (“we’ll give you those albums for free to take home if you promise never to play them on the shop floor again”), I developed a series of contacts from indie label distributors, and then decided to develop my own open ended distro under the moniker of The Trundley Experience. It didn’t bring in the money as I had hoped, but it put me in touch with lots of amazing people and amazing music, and right in the forefront of a whole network of musicians, artists, distributors, voices and events organisers – it was an excellent  time!

MM: Mostly, those of us involved were huge music fans ourselves, and always on the lookout for something different. I remember you saying, in your first letter (on paper, with a stamp!), that you’d bought a copy of our “Zoen Nostalgia” album a couple of years earlier from Ken MacKenzie’s Rat Music Company, how much ‘underground shopping’ did you do back then and what were the real gems you uncovered?

If you ask people like Kev Trundley for 'a photograph', this is what you get!

CONTINUED >>>