Brian Fowler (BCR)

To Contact Brian Fowler email [email protected] New Studio Album for 2009 "Suckers Prize" Buy the Mp3's or CD!!Brand new 2009 LIVE Album w/ Bibb City Ramblers and Wildman Steve on Washboard!!!!Paul Angelsanto's review of Brian Fowler-Fountain City Blues: Brian has recorded and written songs w/ members of Jefferson Airplane, Hawkwind,Spaceseed and Moby Grape. 13 songs and 58 minutes of bluegrass, newgrass,blues and experimental acoustic music. Fountain City Blues is Fowler's homage to back porch blue grass instrumental music. One of the impressive things about this disc is that it is a strictly one man deal. Brian plays all the instruments. Fowler produced it himself and over half the tunes are originals. This disc features Fowler doing some intricate plucking and strumming on the guitar, bass, mandolin, and he even takes a stab at the violin. Fountain City Blues opens up with an original called White Tail Ridge which is a sweet taste of the great sounds to come. The time change in the middle of White Tail Ridge is so subtle and deft you hardly notice it shifting into high gear until the tune is speeding by you. It takes a breezy tune on a hairpin turn. The traditional Train 45 is next. This track features some nice jangly guitar harkening back to the days of the Yardbirds and beyond. Then we get the title track. The mando and the guitar swing off each other perfectly. There's so much going on the track it takes repeated listens to get your ears around everything that's going on. Fowler stretches his musical muscles on this one for sure. Fowler covers Little Sadie next. There are some deep romantic slices of violin in his version. Foggy Mountain Breakdown is another cover song. This one has a sweet waltz feel. Really nice for some slow dancing and romancing. Port Columbus Blues features some spacey theremin whirls in the background. Ok I know that sounds like a weird thing to have going on in a blue grass tune but it works. It's hard to say why. Maybe it's because it adds a psych quality to an otherwise standard arrangement or maybe it's because the mandolin floats over the ethereal tones. Whatever the reasons it works out well and is a welcome component to this number. Fowler gives us a rousing rendition of House of the Rising Sun. There's a stirring quality to Fowlers thick attack of the guitar. Concrete Soldier has a strong melody that takes you away to a different age. You can really feel like your only care is sipping your mint julep as this song fills you up. Ghost of Andersonville has some striking mandolin tremolos that hang expertly on top of thick acoustic guitar chords. There are some nice Kentucky style sweeps of the violin that really fill the space on what starts as a breezy number then turns into what might almost be called "proggrass" with some great time and structure changes creeping into the tune. His cover of Amazing Grace is well, very spiritual. You can feel Fowler pouring himself into all the moving mando tremolos that decorate this tune. Eufaula is another Fowler original. This is a fast paced number and you can hear Fowler's fingers flying over the mandolin. This is a great knee slapping dance number. You'll have to fight to keep your feet from moving to this tune. The disc closes out with a rendition of the traditional Weeping Willow. It feels like there's a whole band blazing away on this one. You can't help but feel like your at the local dance hall on summer night with your best gal or guy and you're ready to cut the rug one more time. The whole disc has a deceptively under produced and casual feel to it like it was done in a single afternoon but repeated listens reveal that to be untrue. The complexity of the playing and songs speak to long hours of writing, recording, and mixing. This a great disc for chilling on the deck, barbecuing, cruising on a backwoods road, or watching a summer sun set..2007 Solo Instrumental CD By Brian Fowler. Pick up cd or Download mp3's.Architects Of Twilight Review by Steve Rowland Holding Together the Jefferson Airplane fan Mag ‘Architects Of Twilight’ – Spaceseed (Zeta Reticuli Records, USA/ Voiceprint, UK) Fasten those seatbelts, star children. Contemporary space-rock doesn’t come any spacier - or rockier - than this latest powerhouse offering from the Seed. If you failed to check them out following my review of ‘Empire Of Night’ [HT38], you owe it to yourselves to get to hear ‘Architects Of Twilight’. Spaceseed, (presumably named after that famous episode of Star Trek from its inaugural 1967 series), was formed some two decades ago by John Pack and a group of guys with a mutual love of the music of the mighty Hawkwind. Over the years, the relationship between the outfits has morphed from imitative adulation to something akin to incorporation. Veteran Hawk Nik Turner has played with Spaceseed live on tour in the US and on their 2005 studio album ‘Future Cities Of The Past’ (which was billed as being by Spaceseed “featuring Nik Turner”); sometime Hawkwind bass and keyboard/synth player Harvey Bainbridge has also toured and recorded with the Seed over several years; and latterly, the Hawks’ female vocalist, Bridget Wishart, has become a regular contributor to Spaceseed recordings as well. The crew behind this latest creation are: Paul Angelosanto (lyricist), Harvey Bainbridge (synths), Brian Fowler (lead guitar, vocals), Bob Harvey (vocals), Steve Hayes (synths, bass guitar), John Pack (lead guitars, vocals), Josh Sattler (bass guitar), John Stanton (guitars), Hank Tart (drums), Allen Welty Green (producer) and Bridget Wishart (vocals). Over ten tracks and forty hugely enjoyable minutes, Spaceseed weave their mesh of guitars, synthesizers and (mostly spoken) lyrics as they very loosely tell the story of an attempt by those fiendish Agents of Twilight to take over our lovely world and lead us from illumination to obscurity. (Some might argue we’re doing a good job of that already without external assistance!) The opus commences with a chilling broadcast from the “dealers of darkness”, those afore-mentioned Architects of Twilight. Topped and tailed by some signature flute music, Bridget Wishart declaims: “The premise of destruction is not open to debate…You should surrender your world to us. We will be gentle masters… We will not tolerate chaos!” Oooh er… “Rivers In The Sky” really launches proceedings. It is seven minutes of spectacular, high octane rock-out – solid drumming, busy bass, twin riffing guitars and Harvey Bainbridge on synthesizers and vocals. These guys take it from the garage to the outer limits with commendable enthusiasm! As “Rivers…” dies away, huge swathes of ‘wind-swept’ synths swirl and drift from speaker to speaker on the atmospheric (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) instrumental piece, “Nebula Part 1”. This is stunning three-dimensional sound, which does much more than simply provide some respite in advance of the next rocking blast, “The Saucer Incident”. The latter powers in on the buzzing, head-banging ‘Architects Of Twilight’ riff. Despite many plays, I’ve not yet deciphered the lyrics in the dense mix, so I don’t know what the saucer incident is, beyond “the saucer came and everything changed” but – honestly – it’s the playing and the atmosphere the song creates, that matters here and the musicianship, the guitar-playing in particular, is mesmerising. Bob Harvey, ex-bass player with Jefferson Airplane, ventriloquist and army colleague of Brian Fowler, performs the cameo role of the incarcerated “hero” in the deeply ironic and superbly orated “Blood On My Hands”: “They told me to release the living machines into the colonists’ water supply. They didn’t tell me why. They never tell me why. A hero doesn’t need to know why. A hero is just part of the design.” “Titan” is another five minutes of storming and tumbling space music, with hard-riffing guitars, phasing, modulators at the max and the indefatigable Hank ‘Pop’ Tart giving his kit such a battering that he almost lives up to the title of the song! Just when the listener is getting lost in the majesty of the groove, Ms Wishart resurfaces to remind us that chaos will not be tolerated and the song segues into “Omega”, another spoken Wishart piece over minimal, brooding synthesized backing. This tells of an experiment gone wrong, the developing of a machine that has taken on a life and a purpose of its own, beyond its creator’s design or control. (I tried to warn you, I tried to warn you!) Cue “The Insane Scientist”, another sinewy rocker under/over which Bainbridge intones a description of his encounter with some awful beastie that stared right into his soul and found it “too empty and dead to matter”; it’s a psych-rock updating of Edgar Allan Poe, complete with manic laughter and spiralling hysteria to the fade. “Nebula Part 2”, the second purely instrumental piece, interposes its beautifully desolate mellifluousness for five minutes prior to the concluding instrumental rock-out that is “Warlord”. Once again, the sonic geometry that Harvey Bainbridge and Steve Hayes conjure up is breath-taking. This final track revisits those searing ‘Architects of Twilight’ riffs, powerhouse drums underpinning some bubbling organ pyrotechnics, with twin lead guitars duelling over the top until it all settles into a final riffing groove that nods in the direction of the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”. In a neat conceptual conceit, the flute that opened proceedings also closes them. This is a hugely entertaining outing. ‘Architects Of Twilight’ dubs itself “the hammer to space-rock’s anvil” and it should resonate with fans of good psychedelic space-rock music everywhere. (which surely includes everybody reading this review). I’m told it should be available from CDBaby or Voiceprint but you might like to try Zeitgiest Records first, PO Box 13499, Edinburgh EH6 8YL, or online at www.sfblue.co.ukSteve RowlandNew 2009 Spaceseed album w/ Brian Fowler on Lead Guitar,Vocals along w/ Jefferson Airplane Founding Member Bob Harvey and Hawkwind members Bridget Wishart and Harvey Bainbridge.2006 Spaceseed Album w/ Brian Fowler,Harvey Bainbridge (Hawkwind),Bob Harvey (Jefferson Airplane) ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------------SPA CESEED music ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------< ------------------------------------------Here is some rare Concert Footage of Brian on Tour w/ Hawkwind Legend Harvey Bainbridge and Spaceseed.Spaceseed w/ Harvey Bainbridge FREE FALL
------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------

Myspace Layouts - Myspace Editor - Image Hosting