One moment it was a little blip. The next, our friends are dying': the gay porn soundtrack composers lost to the Aids crisis

"Michael Ely knew from the first moment he met James Allan Taylor that he had found someone special. The pair had separately hitchhiked to a gay bar, with fake IDs, in Sunset Beach, California. They connected, they danced and stepped outside for a kiss in the thick fog. I was only 18 but I knew I had just met my soulmate, says Ely. The pair remained a couple until 2015 when Taylor, who was nicknamed Spider, died from liver cancer."

"Josh Cheon runs Dark Entries, a San Francisco-based record label that focuses on celebrating overlooked gay artists, including many who died from Aids-related illnesses, and releasing their lesser-known forays into the world of soundtracking gay porn. As well as Taylor's Surge Studio Music material, there have been releases by the Hi-NRG and disco pioneer Patrick Cowley and the electro innovator Man Parrish, and the compilation Deep Entries: Gay Electronic Excursions 1979-1985, described as 10 tracks of obscure queer synth bliss."

"This had been on my docket since day one of the label, Cheon says. There were all these compilations of people doing rare Australian synth pop or Japanese new wave but I'm like: What about gay? Where's the gay voice in all of this? It's all been erased, forgotten, lost to Aids or thrown out.' So I've literally been working on this for 16 years trying to amplify this underground gay music scene."

Michael Ely met James Allan Taylor at a Sunset Beach gay bar and the pair remained partners until Taylor died from liver cancer in 2015. Taylor composed electronic pieces for gay porn films under Surge Studio Music, and cassette tapes of those recordings were later rediscovered. Josh Cheon runs Dark Entries, a San Francisco label that reissues overlooked queer electronic music and soundtracks, including releases by Patrick Cowley and Man Parrish and the compilation Deep Entries: Gay Electronic Excursions 1979-1985. The label donates proceeds to AIDS charities and aims to restore visibility and fairer payment to undercompensated artists.

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