Mechanical Fantasy Box, by Patrick Cowley

Mechanical Fantasy Box

by Patrick Cowley

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Αθανάσιος I'd get it just for the book tbhon. It's graphic but very sincere

hjserne Patrick Cowley is simply the BEST! Far ahead of his time, died much to soon...

Robotboot So much great music from such a short span of time. Patricks music it truly inspiring. I can listen to this over and over and fracking over. Favorite track: Lumberjacks in Heat.

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The vinyl comes housed in a black and white gatefold jacket designed by Gwenaël Rattke featuring a photograph by Susan Middleton, an essay from bandmate Maurice Tani and an 8.5x11 insert with notes.

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100 Limited Edition Hardcover copies with solid black vinyl mimicking Patrick's original diary.
Each copy comes with a hand-stamped and numbered Risograph print and a metallic gold and blue/black business card. *LIMIT ONE PER CUSTOMER*

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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 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. 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.

Includes unlimited streaming of Mechanical Fantasy Box via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. ... more

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Discounted bundle for Mechanical Fantasy Box 2xLP and Softcover Book

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Discounted bundle for Mechanical Fantasy Box CD and Softcover Book

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1.	Out of Body (Intro) 04:38	buy track
2.	Right Here, Right Now 03:16	buy track
3.	Broken Dishes 02:07	buy track
4.	Breakdown 03:22	buy track
5.	Moving Bodies I 05:36	buy track
6.	Grisha's Tune 05:42	buy track
7.	Sensitivity 06:37	buy track
8.	Shrouds 06:01	buy track
9.	Lumberjacks in Heat 11:26	buy track
10.	Mechanical Fantasy Box 07:32	buy track
11.	Thrill of the Hunt 05:06	buy track
12.	Before Original Sin 05:59	buy track
13.	Sea of China 08:14	buy track

about

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 8.5x11 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.

credits

released October 19, 2019

license

about

Patrick Cowley San Francisco, California

discography

Some Funkettes

Oct 2020
Mechanical Fantasy Box

Oct 2019
Kickin' In

Oct 2019
Catholic

Sep 2018
Afternooners

Oct 2017
Candida Cosmica

Aug 2017
Muscle Up

Aug 2017
School Daze

Aug 2017

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