Last month, Dark Entries announced Mechanical Fantasy Box, a new compilation made up of previously unreleased archival material by the late Patrick Cowley.
Premiering above is one of the compilation’s highlights, the 11-minute ‘Lumberjacks in Heat’. The track offers a more frenetic, live instrumentation-focused take on Cowley’s sound compared to the gay porn soundtracks that made up the previous reissues of Cowley’s past work through Dark Entries. Still present however are the shimmering, expansive synth lines that Cowley pioneered.
The 13 tracks featured on Mechanical Fantasy Boy were recorded by Cowley between 1973 and 1980, and will be released alongside Cowley’s homoerotic journal of the same title which was written between 1974 and 1980. It’s described as a "graphic accounts of one man’s sex life" and you can find an exclusive excerpt from the book below.
Dark Entries will release Mechanical Fantasy Box on October 19. Proceeds from the release will be donated to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Cowley died aged 32 following his AIDS diagnosis.
Patrick Cowley – Mechanical Fantasy Box journal excerpt
NOV 15, ‘76
"These days I cannot perceive things in quite the same light as previously. The finite nature of our physical bodies is made painfully apparent by David’s accident. I feel fragile, like a Japanese house or a piece of lace. I am touched in a very deep and sensitive place by the people around me… David, Richard, George and Steven — Some of the men that mean much, they are parts of me I don’t want to lose. But I am reminded not too gently that other forces will make their power felt beyond my conscious efforts to endear and be endeared … to inspire & be inspired to probe and develop and ease the pain and to serve as material to others for similar exploration. To love and be loved is a simple thing, as simple as life and death.
I am growing."
