Joe Theobald, aka DJ Captain Wormhole, Looks at all things vinyl 

WITH trading drawing to a close it’s time to sew up another quarter with my stand out record from the past three months. So far this year we’ve had BJ4, Con Todos Los Hierros and The W.

For Q-quatro it’s one that was dropped in my record bag by the good souls at work, as a birthday present back in October: Patrick Cowley’s 1981 sophomore solo album Megatron Man.

Side 1 opens with the title track, and it’s ridiculous, in all the good ways. Racing a My Little Pony down Mario Kart’s Rainbow Road is what Megatron Man sounds like, it’s so upbeat it could draw a smile from an Easter Island Moai. The song is also a rare example of acceptable vocoder usage.

Sea Hunt, the second track, marginally tones down the general sense of rapture and joy and feels more like a mystery journey, under the sea I suppose, with little Disney-esque friendly star fishes and a dreamy decomposition followed by shooting subaqueous lasers and a trio of water nymphs on backing vox.

Teen Planet is the final song on the A-side and is a bit of an odd-ball groove. It doesn’t really fit with the rest of the album but it is punchy in a punky American way with some sweet synth riffs.

Get A Little commences the B-side with a delightful serving of cow-bells, the percussion of deities. I like the vocals on this track and the period synth stabs on the chorus. It’s a song that swings. Lift Off continues the relentlessly uplifting Hi-NRG tone “into another dimension” where you must “leave your troubles far behind”.

Thank God For Music wraps up the big camp electronic affair with as much subtlety as you would expect based on its precedence. It’s at the end of the album and was certainly produced for DJs to play at the end of a night.

Sadly, just a year after this album was released Cowley succumbed to Aids and died at the age of 32.