Trunk Records is a British independent record label, which specialises mainly in lost film scores, unreleased TV music, library music, sexploitation and kitsch releases. It was founded in 1995 by Jonny Trunk (born Jonathan Benton-Hughes) and has since gained a cult following as a result of the releases of material from scores for cult films such as Deep Throat, Kes, The Wicker Man, Blood on Satan's Claw and George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Other releases include soundtracks for cult UK Television series such as The Tomorrow People, UFO, Bod and Vernon Elliott's score for Clangers and Ivor the Engine. As well as film music and jazz, the label has also brought to public attention the lost or unreleased works of Tristram Cary and BBC Radiophonic Workshop's John Baker.
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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 cult 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.[1] 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 also championed the work 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.
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 has a column in Mojo exploring the world of bizarre and esoteric recordings. Jonny Trunk is also a regular broadcaster on London's art radio station Resonance FM. His show "OST" has concentrated on film music, TV music, library music and related recordings. Other recent broadcasting has included the BBC Radio 4 documentary Into The Music Library and presenting on BBC Two's The Culture Show.
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 sees the publication of Own Label, Sainsbury's Design Studio 1962 - 1977. This book brings 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.
"The Ladies' Bras", a single by 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.[2]
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."