Review: Dylan Fowler’s ‘Ebb & Flow’ Is an Eclectic Masterpiece

Fingerstyle guitarist Dylan Fowler straddles multiple worlds, collaborating closely with musicians from Finland, India, Turkey, and across the Celtic diaspora. On this solo album, his first in more than a decade, he brings it all back home, finding his inspiration in American jazz (Keith Jarrett’s “My Song”), Brazilian pop (“Joy”), Bulgarian folk (“Erghen Diado”), and Indian classical (“Six Thaal”) while remaining close to his folk-trad roots in Wales, where he’s lived most of his life.

It’s a delicate balance, but no matter how far he reaches, Fowler keeps coming back to the pastoral sweetness of the Welsh countryside. For the John Coltrane ballad “Naima,” Fowler focuses on the brightest colors and the gentlest chords, letting the notes dance across the landscape and pausing only for an occasional reverie. For “Ergen Deda,” a powerhouse originally recorded by the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir, Fowler opens with the quietest, narrowest of drones before delicately widening his palette, turning the piece into a surprisingly intimate meditation on love, aging, and village life.

Closer to the tradition, he draws a deep well of mournfulness from the Scots “Black Is the Colour,” contrasts the promise and disappointment of romance in a stunning version of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood,” and explores the region with two new compositions. In “Rhigos,” he captures the view atop a nearby mountain, and in “Llyn y Fan,” he follows the movement of butterflies across a field, gently alighting before taking flight again. That’s Fowler at his most strikingly original—both worldly and Welsh—mixing equal parts jazz and folk to trace the flow of nature in beautifully complex, richly warm meditations on the large and small worlds around him.

A gem.