Patrick Cowley

Woebot

Well-known member
Been nosing around the terrain of NRG a little. I'd previously found a couple of Bobby O 12"s The Flirts "Passion" and "From a Whisper to a Scream" (the former excellent) and then just the other day discovered a superb Bobby O comp on (i think) Lambshorn Records. There is great integrity to Bobby O's sound, it should fill any electronic musician who fears the effects of the ravages of time on the sound their machines make with hope. Bobby's "one-mand-band" sonics sound (improbably) fresh as a daisy.

Anyways, been following the trail a little, and it strikes me that along with Bobby and Giorgio Moroder, Patrick Cowley on the West Coast was probably the other great Hi-NRG producer. However, I've only heard some of the Sylvester things and, well, theyre a bit crap. Can anyone tell me what comp or what productions of Patrick Cowley I should be looking for?

Cheers big ears.
 

AshRa

Well-known member
Patrick Cowley / Sylvester

Not Hi-NRG by any means, but my favourite Patrick Cowley Sylvester production is "I Need Somebody To Love Tonight". It's a midtempo super-heavy spacey synth track that hits all the right spots! 6 minutes long but I could easily listen to it for an hour. There's a few different mixes of it available but the instrumental has an annoying 4/4 kick all the way through!

My first post! :eek:
Ash
 

xero

was minusone
a few excellent cowley numbers:

Get a little
Mindwarp LP
Sea Hunt (proto drexciya if there ever was such a thing)
Primitive World
I got a line on you
Megatron Man
X-factor

his re-edit of 'I feel Love'
his mega-mix of Tantra's 'The Hills of Katmandu'

drop me a line & I'll round them up on a CD-R if u like
 

xero

was minusone
btw does anyone know if the fabled patrick cowley remix of 'funkytown' actually exists and if so is it any good?
 

john eden

male pale and stale
crow.jpg
 

Woebot

Well-known member
DigitalDjigit said:
Not lambshorn but rams horn.

no its not rams horm. thats the dodgy belgian disco label with the lists of their releases on the back isnt it? i'll check ilya, but im pretty sure its lambshorn :confused:
 

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
Hehe, ok. My bad. I just kinda figured that lambshorn is close to rams horn and since you weren't sure I would chip in. Dodgy it may be but they (re)released a lot of good stuff. Loleatta Holloway - Hit 'n' Run remix by..eh...walter gibbons and lots and lots of italo.
 

redcrescent

Well-known member
Cowley's albums (Megatron Man, Mind Warp, Menergy) are all worth scourging the bargain bins for.
IMHO, one of Cowley's finest moments was his last production, "Do you wanna funk" (Megatone 12" 1982), with the irrepressible Sylvester on vocals.
Apparently, Cowley, lacking the strength to sit up straight, directed the sessions in the studio lying down (NB Cowley was one of the first 'celebrity' AIDS victims) because he knew his time was running out... He was 32.

re.: Ram's Horn- I've never bought more naff stuff on any label than Ram's Horn, and all because I loved the first 12"s I got as Ram's Horn reissues, Rockwell's "Somebody's watching me" and "Walking on sunshine" by Rocker's Revenge.
 

redcrescent

Well-known member
WOEBOT said:
the dodgy belgian disco label
Well, I'll be... Ram's Horn is a Dutch outfit and apart from offering their entire back catalog for the tidy sum of € 25K (!) they appear to be large scale purveyors of gabba, goa trance, aerobics and happy hardcore CDs.
(I've just found out my copy of Sharon Redd's "Beat the Street" is worth € 25 new. Now where'd those Skyy 12"s go??)
 

puretokyo

Mercury Blues
There are three great Bobby O comps that have been available for about fifteen years now, search bobby orlando on amazon, I recently picked them up and theres some superb music on there. that said, that new 2x12" one on boomkat has lovely artwork. Also interesting to look at the first pet shop boys album and see what they did with his sound. Anyone recommend any other good stuff in the vein? I'm more interested in the new york end of matters rather than the euro stuff

it seems to me that theres a certain of genetic material shared between bobby o and mantronix and tina b etc... The Danceteria, anyone?
 

puretokyo

Mercury Blues
Yeah, lovely cover art on that Megahorn comp. It's not terribly comprehensive though, 12 tracks I think? Still, young Bobby wasn't known for his variety...
 

dannyDMX

Member
cowley/bobby "o" etc

matt, you'd have to figure I'd pop up when I found this thread. Bobby "O" and Patrick Cowley are like the twin pedestals of Hi-NRG. And of course the Evelyn Thomas song "High Energy". Bobby O's hilarious because his sound is so totally his own, and it's not really a sound, but a rhythm. I have records of his done with analog gear on a 4-track and records done on a fairlight and they're pretty much all the same song! They all have the same rim shot pattern and this one melodic hook that he uses constantly. There's a few more uptempo rock/new wave kind of songs as well, like Barbi and the Kens' Just a Gigolo or Don't Put Another Dime in the Jukebox by the Flirts. My favorite Bobby O song is called Love on Video by the NY Models and it took me a LONG time to find that. Last night I heard Voodoo Man by Roni Griffith, which was hot as well. He had a bunch of different record labels, but the later stuff, the more digital/hi-nrg stuff on Memo is worth checking out, I'm a big fan of a song called Aggression by Charlene Davis, but that's well, very hi-nrg. Don't pay more then a dollar for it, you know?

anyway, Patrick Cowley, on the other hand, is really a much more interesting producer. It's not the melodies that are all the same, but a quality to his programming that sets him apart from Moroder, Gino Soccio(a whole other thread for him...) or any other producer. Much of his stuff was done on a Prophet 5 for what it's worth. I have very romantic feelings about his music. Some of it definately is a bit too "menergetic"(to use a term derived from his own music) like his work with Paul Parker, the mustached muscleman with whom he put out a few records. But much of his solo stuff focuses more on the sci-fi, even the track Menergy. That and Megatron Man, Mindwarp etc are all killer tracks. This stuff is all mostly instrumental, electronic, occasionally vocoded or disco nonsense vocals (ahhhahhh) and has dated really well to my ears.

One really hot track to look for is the song Get A Little, a single and also on the Megatron Man record. It has a woman singing and is just a fantastic gem.

His 15 minute version of I Feel Love is essential, and the stuff w/ Sylvester is hit or miss. I mean, if you're a fan, you'll like it all, but if you're not a HUGE fan, Do You Want To Funk, You Make Me Feel Mighty Real, Stars etc are all pretty good. But let me reiterate something said above...I Need Somebody to Love Tonight, hidden away on the Stars ep, is the single most BEAUTIFUL moment of electronic music EVER! It's not on any of the repressings or best of, and for that reason I've bought 3 or 4 copies of the ep so far. Maybe I'll send you one.

But yeah, Cowley is god, and Gino Soccio is an underrated genius who's catalog is finally being appreciated beyond the ubiquitious Dancer. Go to the mixes on http://alldisco.net and you can hear a few of his songs.

dan selzer
 

Woebot

Well-known member
dannyDMX said:
Bobby O's hilarious because his sound is so totally his own, and it's not really a sound, but a rhythm. I have records of his done with analog gear on a 4-track and records done on a fairlight and they're pretty much all the same song!
Remember that adage about Detroit Techno taking Berry Gordy's production-line aesthetic and intensifying it? Well that hardly seems to apply to DT in reality, those slabs are so "artistic" so clearly the work of auteurs, but Bobby O, now you REALLY COULD describe him as a factory. (Reading from the liner notes) "Between 1979 and 1985, his name appeared on at least 400 individual releases - a release every week for six years" (Jaw drops) The tie-in between the whole mechanised dancefloor "work-out" and this is kinda fascinating. Dancers as Deleuzian cogs in the machine.

dannyDMX said:
His 15 minute version of I Feel Love is essential, and the stuff w/ Sylvester is hit or miss. I mean, if you're a fan, you'll like it all, but if you're not a HUGE fan, Do You Want To Funk, You Make Me Feel Mighty Real, Stars etc are all pretty good. But let me reiterate something said above...I Need Somebody to Love Tonight, hidden away on the Stars ep, is the single most BEAUTIFUL moment of electronic music EVER! It's not on any of the repressings or best of, and for that reason I've bought 3 or 4 copies of the ep so far. Maybe I'll send you one.
Drool. Minusone is sorting me out with a CD. Forgot to mention that I have "Mindwarp", but your description of "I Need Somebody to Love Tonight", man I maay have to go and hunt it down ASAP.
 
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