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TO BE RELEASED AS 2xLP + BOOK ENTITLED MECHANICAL FANTASY BOX ON PATRICK’S 69TH BIRTHDAY, OCTOBER 19TH, 2019 LISTEN TO PREVIEW CLIPS HERE Patrick Cowley was one of the most revolutionary and influential figures in the canon of electronic dance music. Born in Buffalo, NY on October 19, 1950, Patrick moved to San Francisco in 1971 to study electronic music at the City College of San Francisco. By the late ‘70s, Patrick’s synthesizer techniques landed him a job composing and producing songs for disco diva Sylvester, including #1 hit “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”. Cowley created his own brand of peak-time party music known as Hi-NRG, also dubbed “The San Francisco Sound.” By 1981 Patrick had released a string of his own dance 12″ singles, such as “Menergy” and “Megatron Man”. That year, he co-founded Megatone Records to release his debut album Megatron Man. Meanwhile, Patrick was hospitalized and diagnosed with an unknown illness, which would later be named AIDS. Recovering for a spell, in 1982 he composed two more #1 hits, “Do You Wanna Funk” for Sylvester, and “Right On Target” for Paul Parker, as well as a second solo album Mind Warp. His life was cut short on November 12, 1982, when he passed away two weeks after his 32nd birthday from AIDS-related illness. Mechanical Fantasy Box is a new collection of 13 unreleased songs recorded between 1973-80 released in tandem with Cowley’s homoerotic journal of the same title. What you hold in your hand is a collection of Cowley’s work from the years preceding his meteoric rise as a pioneer of Hi-NRG dance music. This was before drum machines. Before programmable, polyphonic digital synthesis, this is experimental music in every sense. Sounds flows from funk to kraut to psychedelic ambient electronics inspired by Tomita and Kraftwerk. As David Diebold stated in Tribal Rites, “Patrick Cowley parted the veil and entered a dark world of forbidden forces, wondrous musical panoramas and bold, strident, hopeful possibilities. Patrick brought the future to us and laid it at our feet.” Some songs were mixed from 4-track stems by Joe Tarantino and all songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studio in Berkeley, CA. The vinyl comes housed in a black and white gatefold jacket designed by Gwenaël Rattke featuring a photograph by Susan Middleton, liner notes by bandmate Maurice Tani and an 8.5×11 insert with notes. Proceeds from Mechanical Fantasy Box will be donated to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, who have been committed to ending the pandemic and human suffering caused by HIV since 1982. Patrick Cowley Mechanical Fantasy Box 2xLP / CD / Digital 1. Out of Body (Intro) 2. Right Here, Right Now 3. Broken Dishes 4. Breakdown 5. Moving Bodies I 6. Grisha’s Tune 7. Sensitivity 8. Shrouds 9. Lumberjacks in Heat 10. Mechanical Fantasy Box 11. Thrill of the Hunt 12. Before Original Sin 13. Sea of China Mechanical Fantasy Box is Cowley’s homoerotic journal, or as he called it, “graphic accounts of one man’s sex life.” The journal begins in 1974 and ends in 1980 on his 30th birthday. It chronicles his slow rise to fame from lighting technician at The City Disco to crafting a ground-breaking 16-minute remix of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” to performing with Sylvester at the SF Opera House. Vivid descriptions are told of cruising in ‘70s SoMA sex venues to primal highs in Buena Vista Park and composing pornophonics in his Castro apartment. The entries are introspective and show a very out-front, alive person going through the throes of gay liberation post-Stonewall. French-born artist and Berlin resident Gwenaël Rattke works in collage, silkscreen, photography and Xerox graphics. Rattke’s collage works borrow from the visual codes of the 60s and 70s. Intricate, ornamental and excessive, they present “an imagined past fired with beauty and sexual freedom.” For this book Rattke created 25 original illustrations inspired by selected entries, 3 street maps documenting locations mentioned herein and 4 collages of photos, ephemera and notes Patrick stuffed inside the journal. We’ve included Patrick’s doodles too, as well as introductory essays by Josh Cheon, Theresa McGinley and Jorge Socarrás. Also available in a limited edition of 100 gold-foil embossed black vinyl hardcover copies with hand-stamped & numbered silkscreen insert and a metallic gold & blue bookmark. — For all Patrick Cowley press related inquiries please contact: Christopher Hansell – chris.hansell@leftfieldpr.com |
Release Party Info:
Dark Entries + Dirty Looks present:
MENERGY: A NIGHT OF PATRICK COWLEY
Saturday, October 19, 8PM – 12AM
Civic Center Studios
207 S Broadway Suite One
Los Angeles, CA 90012
$20
dirtylooksla.org
contact information: info@dirtylooksla.orgTo commemorate his 69th birthday, Dirty Looks Inc will team with Dark Entries Records to celebrate the life of Patrick Cowley who created his own brand of Hi-NRG dance music, dubbed the “San Francisco Sound.” Producer to Sylvester’s biggest hits and creator of the epic 16-minute “I Feel Love” remix, Patrick’s legend has become a symbol for a time when free love and technology would come together to forever change the social landscape. Dark Entries is thrilled to premiere a new collection of Cowley songs at the culmination of readings from MECHANICAL FANTASY BOX, The Homoerotic Journal of Patrick Cowley. Let’s come together to celebrate the journey and genius of Patrick and to appease the disco spirits of so many like him who fell victim to the AIDS crisis.
Readers, who will purr life into never-before-heard passages from the cruising diaries include Nikki Darling, Divinity P. Fudge, Paul Gellman, Aimee Goguen, Brontez Purnell, Mr. Drummer ‘79, Mz Neon, Beau Rice, and Sheree Rose. Cowley’s previously released porn soundtracks will be accompanied by their Fox Studio gay porn imagery. And graphics produced by Gwenaël Ratke for the publication will be brought to life by filmmaker Jill Reiter, alongside video documentation of Cowley honing his craft.
A DECADE OF DARK ENTRIES
Friday, September 20, 9PM – 3AM
THE STUD
399 9th St & Harrison
$15
https://www.residentadvisor.net/events/1309739
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