Patrick Cowley – Mechanical Fantasy Box (Dark Entries)

Dark Entries treat an undeserving world to Mechanical Fantasy Box, an archival collection of erotically charged experimental electronics by Patrick Cowley

Picture this, a day in September. I’m on the train back from Manchester, “Lumberjacks in Heat” by Patrick Cowley comes on (my iPod rather than a magical deep cut train stereo system) and I want to get up and dance on the tiny table. I’ve already had a few drinks and Mechanical Fantasy Box is exactly what I now need. Although I do not physically climb on to the table (sorry to disappoint), that’s exactly where the music takes me in my mind. It is almost too difficult to contain my excitement regarding this track in particular – I scan the faces of my fellow passengers, wonder what joys Cowley’s music would bring to them.

Mechanical Fantasy Box collects previously unreleased tracks made by Patrick Cowley between 1973 and 1980, lovingly curated by Dark Entries. The title is shared with a recently unearthed, never-before-printed homoerotic journal which is being published alongside the album. Cowley, the sadly lost-long-before-his-time purveyor of The San Francisco Sound, is a mythic figure in the evolution of electronic music and this collection will surely strengthen his ever-increasing reputation. For this is beautifully crafted machine music that is playful, weird and invigorating.

“Right Here, Right Now” is a continuous blast of amyl nitrate. Sped-up synthology that conveys a hyperreal sense of living in the moment, it’s a jaunty and abstract Hi-NRG emission that is impossible to resist. Coming down off the rush, “Broken Dishes” is an exploratory two minutes of spaced out electronics. This is pioneering synth-work that combines the eerie sonic soundscapes exploited by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop with Cowley’s inimitable ability to unearth melodic structures from the unshaped vastness of possibility. Meanwhile, “Breakdown” is a squelching drum and sleazy synthesiser workout that feels as if it has been eased out of the same cloth as Cowley’s gay porn soundtracks. 

“Grisha’s Tune” is a thousand afternoons of the sun bleeding through the curtains. A strung out, dayglo sonic odyssey and polyrhythmic dive down the rabbit hole. There’s a sense of anything goes playfulness, yet Cowley is in absolute control of every element and its relationship to everything else. In lesser hands, this would have been at best an indulgence. Introspective inner spaces are navigated on “Shrouds” which – by its place in the tracklisting – becomes the quiet before the beautiful storm of “Lumberjacks in Heat”. It is thus the time to contemplate before embarking on an exhilarating cosmic journey from which there is no coming back.

So to “Lumberjacks in Heat”, the stimulating centrepiece of the album. It is a long and exuberant deep dive into a wonderful world where time slows and speeds up according to mood. Martial drumming and music box synths build into an on-the-edge-of-orgasm electronic throb-and-thrust epic. Listening to “Lumberjacks in Heat” is anything but a passive experience. Indeed, it feels like the sky is falling in and you and the song are the only things left. This is peak experimental disco not disco where organic rhythm is transformed into sexual metaphor. A third eye opening dancefloor marvel with Giorgio Moroder exploding over universes to the sound of industry copulating with nature. Think the rumpus room chapter of Naked Lunch reconfigured with checked-shirt clad men of the woods. It’s a wild, uncontained masterpiece.

And breathe. “Mechanical Fantasy Box” allows you to do just that. Oceanic immersion following cosmic spent-ness, its fractured bleeps bloom into new flesh, like a Casio keyboard as living pod. The lovely repetitiveness of the piece rivals Steve Reich. Even more soothing, “Before Original Sin” is a viscous and enveloping slice of New Age-tinged ambience. More evidence that there is always a powerfully human element to Cowley’s brand of electronic music.

The recent archival release of Chris Carter material from around the same period provides a fascinating comparison with Mechanical Fantasy Box (perhaps Cowley’s music here would be an even more accurate manifestation of the name Throbbing Gristle). Experimental electronic works made with relatively rudimentary equipment, that lay dormant for around four decades and, released today, sound more thrilling than much of what passes for the future in the present. Strange and compelling, forward-thinking and erotically charged, Mechanical Fantasy Box is an essential release for anybody interested in the possibilities of machine music.

patrickcowley.bandcamp.com