Ground Control Touring

After growing up in Reagan-era Berkeley, Brendan Fowler’s parents moved him across the country to the sticks outside Baltimore when he was nine, leaving him culture shocked and having to scour for memos from the outside world. Finding inspiration in skateboarding, fanzines, and his cool older goth friends who were into The Cure, he played music in high school with friends (who would eventually become Animal Collective) and in college in New York City and studied free jazz percussion. After college, he DJ’ed in the performance duo Dogg and Pony, which eventually lead to the birth of the record label he runs called DoggPony (dnp006.com). All the while, he was immersed in the modern and underground art world working at New York’s infamous Alleged Gallery, a place that fostered many important contemporary street artists. Involved in a million different things with a million different groups of people at once, Brandon Fowler was on his way to building up to what would become BARR.

With a previous release on 5RC (US) / Upset The Rhythm (UK) Brendan spent the bulk of last year supporting Beyond Reinforced Jewel Case touring with Xiu Xiu and Animal Collective and was given the opportunity to bring his manic musical-spoken-word to a wider and more “indie-stream” audience. With his upcoming release Summary, Kill Rock Stars (US) / Upset The Rhythm (UK), the most musical BARR record to date, Brendan explores more of a pop sensibility (without ever becoming poppy) with a new means of lyrical narrative and execution (Brendan learned to sing rather than talk his lyrical prose as on previous pieces). The collection of works spans five tumultuous months of triumphs, failures, loss and growth and evokes a spectrum of raw emotion, as would a novel, a movie, a sonnet, or a classical concerto.

Currently Brendan edits, writes and is the brains behind the free art magazine ANP Quarterly with the pro-skater and visual artist Ed Templeton and Alleged Gallery proprietor Aaron Rose. He spends his off-time (when he finds some) playing in New England Roses with Sarah Shapiro and JD Samson (of Le Tigre). This past summer Brendan had a show at David Kordansky Gallery in LA.