Hood Faire Rec. 
Dean McPhee : Brown Bear -LP- (UK,2009)***
The three tracks on this 21’26” minutes 12 inch LP show Dean’s live guitar approach very well. Armed with nothing but a Fender Telecaster, an amplifier and some effects this is probably how he would sound playing live : also here no editing or overdubs were done.
On the first and shortest track, “Sky Burial” it is as if two people are playing : one bass player playing some folk-flavoured foundation for a moody tune improvisation of the guitarist. Also “Stony Ground” shows a mostly two-note bass foundation (with a third note and some space during the development) for another guitar improvisation, which also has some gentle folk tune in the back of the head, developing this a bit further, while being guided by the 2,3 notes of the bass string. This develops rather song-like, with its own strong emotionality in the development of the tune. The third, and longest track, “Brown Bear”, shows in the beginning the warm boosted amplified resonance of the guitar a bit more clearly. First developing in a similar way as the two previous tracks, this seems to direct a little bit further into its excursion towards something else or towards different tunes further on. On a certain point it slows down and then uses an ambient guitar loop for a much more smoother development, doubling its spacey echoing tune in space, before the same loop is taken as another fundament for a third and deeper into sound improvisation with sliding echoes.
Fender guitarist Dean McPhee has supported artists like Meg Baird and David Thomas Broughton. This is his debut release limited to 500 copies. Two other tracks were released before, like “Water burial” on a split 7” with Chapters and “Dark Moon” on a compilation called “beyond the pale”. The label Hood Fair is a collective with Sam McLoughlin (from Samandtheplants), David A. Jaycock, Alan Creedon, Alison Cooper (Magpahi) and Dean McPhee. The LP was released before as a 49 copies cdr edition and in an edited form as a 10” on Twisted Nerve.
