About

Cybernetic disco maestro Patrick Cowley graces Dark Entries once again with Hard Ware, a double LP of far-out funk and synthpop celebrating what would have been Cowley’s 75th birthday. Best known for his chart-topping disco anthems, Cowley left us with an incredible body of work before his tragic death in 1982 due to AIDS-related illness. Since 2009, Dark Entries has been working with Cowley’s friends and family to uncover the singular artist’s lesser-known sides, including his soundtracks for gay pornographic films, which the label chronicled on compilation albums School Daze, Muscle Up, and Afternooners. Hard Ware presents the closing chapter in a trilogy of unreleased Cowley dancefloor bangers that began with 2022’s heavy-hitting Male Box and was continued with the soul and garage-inflected From Behind in 2024.

The most expansive release in said trilogy, Hard Ware delivers ten tracks of pure, uncut Cowley: sultry, psychedelic, sarcastic, and just a bit sleazy. Cowley devotees will delight in “Tech-No,” a sparse instrumental demo version of his epically dystopian “Tech-No-Logical World.” You could soundtrack your next aerobics session with cheeky numbers like “Pajama Party Massacre” or “Shake It Up,” both of which feature Cowley himself on vocals. The frenetic “Big Ass in Motion” is built around samples from Rudy Ray Moore and The Madam’s infamous “Sensuous Black Woman,” an X-rated comedy record that would later feature in classic booty house records. Mid-tempo cosmic groovers are well-represented with jams like “Hellfire” and “Megablue,” which perfectly capture Cowley’s bathhouse-in-outerspace sensibilities. No collection of Cowley’s work would be complete without an interstellar floor-filler, and we’ve got quite a few here, like “Jungle Jump,” which pits whirling beats with dub-laced swirls of synth, or “Spellbinding Lover,” a Donna Summer-indebted melancholic boogie masterpiece that features Sylvester backup singer Jeanie Tracy. Hard Ware closes with the chilling synth-hymn ”Ice Age,” in which Loverde vocalist Peggy Gibbons sings of a coming frosty apocalypse. The story told in “Ice Age” mirrors the coming AIDS crisis and feels like a haunting premonition from Cowley. — (via Label)

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Cowley lifers will know by now, more or less, what to expect from Hard Ware. Glistening synthesizers and squelchy basslines do battle over drum machines, while vocalists pop up here and there to moan and lament, croon and demand. Tunes such as “Hellfire” and “Perk It Up,” with their rugged simplicity and layout, may seem commonplace, even humdrum—but they’re not. The shimmering synths, the spliced samples, the expansive, floor-filling grooves that you hear in virtually all disco music, that’s all been helped along the way by Cowley. This blueprint is Cowley©. This circuit board is patented.

What’s more, the simplicity often belies the tasteful assembly of these tracks. Cowley’s music sometimes recalls a giant building that only reveals its detailing and complexity once you get within a few feet of it. Enjoy the close-up, or just enjoy the expanse. Headphones or subwoofers. Morning commute or dancefloor. Note how the simple chord change and melody in “Hellfire” is triumphant, yet tinged with a kind of weary resignation, or the genre-less magic of “Pajama Party Massacre,” which is en route to The B-52s by way of The Gun Club, pulsing with electricity. (Campy song titles like that one and “Big Ass In Motion” are worth the price of admission alone.) Cowley is a master of marshalling simple, well-chosen elements into music that subtly shifts and modulates; it’s not dissimilar to the way groups such as Can constructed their hypnotic grooves. — (via Bandcamp)

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— 2LP, pressed on black vinyl
— Housed in gatefold sleeve
— Includes liner notes by Andrew Ryce and Peggy Gibbons

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Label: Dark Entries
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album
Released: 2025
Genre: Electronic
Style: Disco, Experimental, Funk, Hi NRG

File under: Disco / Boogie / Funk
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