The soundtrack to a film is rarely its defining feature. We can all think of exceptions to this rule, but generally, what captures the focus of your attention while watching a film is the action and dialogue, not the music- a deliberately subordinate facet of the production that drips away from your conscious register and into the background to aid in establishing ambiance and other supporting aspects of the viewing experience. More marginal even than your average film score are the arrangments that end up setting the scene in porno flicks, where the substance on the screen is ALL action and not much else. Again, there are exceptions, of which Patrick Cowley's body of work certainly qualifies. The composer was responsible for many sublimely simple ditties in his day, some of them ending as mood setters for bold and brassy homoerotic encounters set to celluloid in the '80s, many of which have now been collected and released as compilations by Dark Entries Records. My current favorite of these collections is Afternooners (named for a skin flick of the same title), not just because I always thought the aphorism for a mid-day hookup was incredibly amusing in a nonchalant and disarmingly innocuous kind of way, but more importantly, because the soundtrack is back to back jams. All of the arrangments have this steady, drifting, interstellar momentum to them, that seems almost more accommodating to a light show at a planetarium than the man-on-man action they were composed for. I would not go so far as to say that you could never guess that this music was meant for a porno if no one told you as much, but it's not the first thing that springs to mind, either. Their bopping, synth drags and radar-sweeping-like intervals are ranging with a satisfying dose of pep, a bubbly overload that saturates the senses like you've been dunked in a vat of fruit-flavor fused seltzer. The tracks often leave the impression that you are being transported to a new reality where you find yourself reinvigorated and rejuvenated by the intoxicating quality of the alien climate and the fantastic visuals of your surroundings. The scores have an air of exploration imbued within them as well as a keen sense of adventure, as if they were meant to accompany a voyage into the unknown, electrified with a zest for pleasure and anomalous sensation that forges a path of rapturous possibilities, venturing forth where no man has gone before... At least, that's the story you might tell yourself and others. There is a first time for everything after all, and if you've never found a porno soundtrack that you could see yourself playing while relaxing for a night of stargazing as easily as you could use it to put the moves on some hard-bodied, heart-throb, then maybe its time that you let go of your inhibitions and see where Afternooners will take you.
