★Dark Entries
Deep Entries: Gay Electronic Excursions 1979-1985
The peerless Dark Entries is back with another comprehensive new collection, Deep Entries: Gay Electronic Excursions 1979-1985, which is a well curated collection of ten rare queer synth tracks that explore the hidden corners of gay musical history. They span a pivotal period of six years and the songs range from sultry to angsty to camp with plenty of lovely 808 snares and textural analogue synths. This period in particular saw the gay community having to deal with the onset of the HIV/AIDS cri…
From Behind
Cybernetic disco maestro Patrick Cowley returns to Dark Entries with From Behind, a collection of grooving and ecstatic covers of 60s garage and soul cuts. 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 films on compilation albums Sc…
Mental Detentions
Robert Rental takes up residence with Dark Entries again for a reissue of Mental Detentions. Robert Rental was a Scottish pioneer of DIY electronic music. Along with his illustrious collaborators like Thomas Leer and Daniel Miller, Rental helped shape the countercultural sound of the UK with his timely melding of Krautrock, dub, and punk. Originally from Port Glasgow, he moved to the south of England with Thomas Leer in the late 1970s, and became involved with the local music scene. Robert Renta…
Dead Eyes Opened
Severed Heads are one of the longest standing bands to have emerged from the Australian post-punk and experimental scene. They began in Sydney in 1979, and were an early outfit to incorporate elements of 'industrial' noise-generation, tape cutting & looping and electronic sound synthesis. As the project developed, song-structures and vocals were employed in a more-or-less recognizable mutant electro pop style. After many line-up changes featuring Gary Bradbury and psychedelic guitarist Simon Knu…
Space Museum
Tip! ** 2024 repress ** Dark Entries present the first ever official vinyl reissue of Space Museum by Solid Space. Solid Space was the British duo of Dan Goldstein (keyboards, vocals) and Matthew 'Maf' Vosburgh (guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals) formed in 1980. Dan and Matthew met at the age of 11 while attending school in north London. In late 1978 at at the age of 14, they formed Exhibit 'A' with Paul “Platypus” and Andrew “Lunchbox” Bynghall. They recorded two EPs in 1979 and 1980, self-releas…
Objects In Mirrors Are Closer Than They Appear
Dark Entries calls on Philadelphia experimental duo The Ghostwriters to resurrect their 1981 LP of minimalist mayhem, Objects In Mirrors Are Closer Than They Appear. The late Buchla maestro Charles Cohen and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Cain joined up in 1971 to craft electroacoustic chaos as Anomali, later renaming themselves The Ghostwriters. Their collaborations with choreographers and visual media artists led to their singular style, straddling improvisation and composition, the oneiric and th…
Remote Dreaming
Dark Entries summons Philadelphia synthesizer scribes The Ghostwriters to rouse their ambient masterwork Remote Dreaming. The late Buchla maestro Charles Cohen and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Cain joined up in 1971 to craft electroacoustic chaos as Anomali, later renaming themselves The Ghostwriters. Their collaborations with choreographers and visual media artists led to their singular style, straddling improvisation and composition, the oneiric and the immediate. Following their debut album, Ob…
Kickin' In
Dark Entries again shines a spotlight on bathhouse disco don Patrick Cowley with a newly remastered release of Kickin’ In. Although Cowley tragically passed from AIDS-related illness in 1982, he left an extensive archive of unreleased tapes, many of which Dark Entries has had the honor of releasing. While working as a lighting technician at The City, SF’s disco cabaret, Cowley saw rising star Frank Loverde perform. Cowley asked Loverde to contribute vocals to some material in progress, and Frank…
Ear Bitten / No Vowels, No Bowels
Dark Entries picks up Severed Heads yet again for Ear Bitten, a double LP reissue of some of the band’s earliest material. As originary Aussie industrial legends - although founder Tom Ellard would balk at being branded as such - Severed Heads shaped the continental subcultural sound with their kitchen electronics, chaotic tape loops, and quietly infectious nursery-rhyme-esque melodies.
In 1979 Ellard, Richard Fielding, and Andrew Wright abandoned the moniker Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign and ado…
Collected Music Graphics (Magazine)
*200 copies limited edition* Dark Entries Collected Music Graphics compiled by Josh Cheon and Eloise Shir-Juen Leigh to celebrate 15 years of Dark Entries, this zine showcases the label’s visual aesthetic, bringing together some of the most iconic designs that we’ve released.
While Dark Entries’ sonic mission has included sounds as diverse as synth-pop, Italo disco, darkwave, house, and techno, it is equally staggering to see the breadth of visuals the label has encountered and collected over th…
Rock Rendez Vous: Música Moderna Portuguesa 1985-1986
The seductive sounds of Portugal swing to Dark Entries on Rock Rendez Vous: Música Moderna Portuguesa 1985-1986, a compilation of vintage Iberian synth, wave, and postpunk gems. The legendary club Rock Rendez Vous (RRV) opened its doors in Lisbon in 1980, heralding a new era in the Portuguese underground. Although touring acts like Killing Joke, Danse Society, or Echo & the Bunnymen graced its stage, RRV more vitally served as ground zero for a new generation of Portuguese bands, one simultaneou…
1982
Dark Entries flashes back to the grimy streets of New York City circa 1982 to bring us an unreleased album from cult outfit Ike Yard. Comprised of Stuart Argabright, Michael Diekmann, Kenneth Compton, and Fred Szymanski, Ike Yard sits between the sinewy proto-body music of the Neue Deutsche Welle and the shattered grooves of their No Wave peers in New York.
The band’s initial run was short but blinding. They released an EP for Les Disques du Crépuscule in 1981, which was followed by their legend…
Afternooners
*2023 repress!!* Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem Records have teamed up once more to release the final volume of gay porn soundtracks by San Francisco-based musician and producer, Patrick Cowley. One of the most revolutionary and influential figures in the canon of disco, Cowley created his own brand of Hi-NRG dance music, “The San Francisco Sound.” Born in Buffalo, NY on October 19, 1950, Patrick moved to San Francisco in 1971 to study at the City College of San Francisco. He founded the Ele…
Music From Hell
Nervous Gender’s legendary synthpunk LP Music From Hell burbles up from infernal depths to resurface on Dark Entries! Confrontational, unhinged, and unabashedly queer, Music from Hell is an unholy grail for fans of the strangest underbellies of post-punk, minimal synth, and early industrial music, and is presented here newly remastered and on expanded double LP. Nervous Gender (de)formed in LA in 1978 at the hands of Phranc, Gerardo Velaquez, Edward Stapleton, and Michael Ochoa. Phranc, the andr…
Lepidoptera Remixes
We’ve recruited 4 contemporary Greek producers to remix their favorite tracks from ‘Lepidoptera’. First up is “Cyaniris” remixed by Anatolian Weapons who delivers an enchanted late-night journey through the New Wave forest. Next is “Araschnia Levana” remixed by Pasiphae who speeds up the pace with machine driven melodic electro pulses. On the B-side we have June remixing “Cyaniris” twirling the track into a complex deep sea dive with lush drum kicks and pads. Closing out the EP is a remix of “Τα…
Sun Masks Remixes
*2023 stock* The San Francisco label Dark Entries has released over 100 records in the past few years, most of them reissues of synth music from the '80s. Given the sheer volume of their output, it would be easy to miss the special attention they gave to one artist: Lena Platonos, a Greek avant-garde musician influential in her time but under-appreciated today (in other words, exactly the kind of figure that makes reissues worthwhile). Since 2015, Dark Entries reissued two of Platonos's albums, …
Good Night
Ian Elms’s cult isolationist synth masterpiece Good Night returns via Dark Entries. Originally released in 1982, Good Night blends Berlin school minimalism and BBC Radiophonic weirdness with the aesthetics of then-nascent DIY punk electronics throughout its fifteen short tracks.
According to Elms, these pieces were composed in two broad but interrelated modes: pieces with voice and synthesizer, which are obliquely narrative, and instrumental synthesizer pieces that aspire to capture fleeting emo…
Panoramic Colorsound
The venerable Dark Entries celebrates it’s 300th release with Panoramic Coloursound, a triple LP from the Creative Technology Consortium. Traxx, Andrew Bisenius, and Jason Letkiewicz forged the CtC during the depths of pandemic isolation. Drawing from film and television music of the 80’s/90’s and armed with a mighty array of vintage analog and digital synthesizers, they set out to explore heists, vices, and catastrophe. Panoramic Coloursound collapses sound and image into a neon blur throughout…
Octopus
Sunfear, the project of Istanbul-based multidisciplinary artist Eylül Deniz, debuts on Dark Entries with Octopus. Since 2017, Deniz has been working as a composer, performer, and DJ, with a focus on different facets of ambient, jazz, and experimental music. Deniz is deeply steeped in both music theory and history. She explores electroacoustic techniques, utilizing piano, guitar, voice, and synthesizer. These are her tools for self-expression, the means to tell her story to the world.
Octopus is …
Piercing Red (Book)
The poetry of groundbreaking Greek artist Lena Platonos takes center stage in Piercing Red: Collected Poems and Lyrics 1984–2008. Best known for her radical electronic music compositions, her innovative work as a poet has been underacknowledged, in no small part due to writing and singing in her native Greek. This book was put together to rectify this lapse, to help encounter her song lyrics on their own as literary work. Collected here are all the poems Platonos put to music over four decades, …