Patrick Cowley & Jorge Socarras - Catholic 2xLP

Label: Dark Entries

Our Review:

While the late great Patrick Cowley is best known for his amazing disco and hi-NRG production for folks like Sylvester and the Megatone label he started, Cowley wore many different musical hats,very much like his east coast counterpart Arthur Russell. It hasn't been until the recent unearthing of literally hundreds of reels of tape from his archives that the world is getting a glimpse of all the way-ahead-of-its-time synth/electronic music he was madly creating before and during his reign as San Francisco's most respected disco maestro.

In the late '70s Cowley appeared on a record by his friend Jorge Socarras' band, the way left-field post-punk group Indoor Life. During that same time period, the two were also collaborating on a project together which sadly never got released, which turned out to be Catholic. Recorded between 1976-1979, Cowley and Socarras really found a way to create charged synth-wave/post-punk that was very much in line with what other forward minded San Francisco folks like The Units and Tuxedomoon were making. With Cowley handling the bulk of the instrumentation (synth, guitar, bass, drums, drum machines, etc.) and Socarras delivering dramatic and ice cold vocals falling somewhere between Gary Numan and John Lydon circa Metal Box. Catholic displays lots of range, from more slow burning grooves to full throttle attacks, New Romantic leanings to proto-Industrial crunch. We can't wait to hear so much more of the amazing music that Cowley created in his much too short of life (he passed away in 1982, one of the earliest casualties of the AIDS epidemic) but luckily for all of us he left an incredible musical legacy that will live on forever!