The late British composer Basil Kirchin had a long and fascinating career starting with gigging as a professional drummer at the age of 14 (playing and recording with various big bands in the 1940s and 1950s), moving on to electronic music and score writing for television, theater, and film the 1960s. And then he started to produce the work he is now best known for: pieces that incorporate the sounds of nature and animals. (One fan of these finely sculpted audioscapes is Brian Eno.) This album features material recorded in the late 1960s and includes “Charcoal Sketches,” which contains ideas Kirchin further developed on Quantum, and “States Of Mind,” the soundtrack for a short psychiatric documentary. The former weds mellow grooves, nice flugelhorn work by Kenny Wheeler, and birdsong into ambient jazz with a bit of an edge; the latter features an excellent band (that includes both Wheeler and sax legend Evan Parker) performing spiky pieces that seem to mix free improv and modernist composition. The easygoing “Sketches” and the agitated “Mind” nicely balance each other, producing an album that finds beauty in darkness and light.