About/Bio

 Thank you for visiting andrewbrel.com where you will find information and details of my various musical and literary projects. Past, present and future.

ABOUT andrewbrel.com

The Music links start with the Andrew Brel Music albums produced originally as Bridge Recordings from 1990 to 2000, including the two albums I made with Spike Edney and the fabulous SAS BAND and the Leo Sayer album ‘Live in London’.

Since 2001, I have made 12 albums in the meditation music genre including three albums with Hugh Burns, ‘Angels and Unicorns’, ‘Celtic Inspiration‘, and ‘7 Bach Meditations.’

There is a page presenting some of my favorite songwriting efforts, including songs with Alan Tarney, Spike Edney, Josh Phillips and Hugh Burns as well as the quite remarkable story of ‘The Paradise Key.
Visit my YouTube channel here for a list of songs I have written.

My  writing page with links to books is HERE along with all my books on my Amazon authors page.

My old ‘Tales from the Riverbank’ Blog is here.

Wallace of Riverbank, my beautiful Schnauzer had a million hit web page. After his passing, in a story you can read in my book WHO LIES WINS, I switched my web pages from HTML to WordPress. I did not migrate the Wallace page but you can access the remains of the original WALLACE OF RIVERBANK page archived HERE.

A few stories from that amazing life on WordPress are HERE.
Some old News pages from Wallace are Here.

My much-read story from the 2004 visit to Cuba is accessible here

You can contact me directly by Facebook private messaging.

Thanks for visiting,
Andrew

I was born in 1960 in Johannesburg to Greek parents, growing up in the predominantly racist religious right South Africa during the apartheid years before emigrating to England at the age of 24 as a Greek citizen.  In 2014, after 29 years in London working as a musician, producer and author, I moved to the start of a fourth nationality in California.

I am a self taught author, starting at an early age. The need to make a living by selling my musical skills delayed my first publication until 2011.
The Emergency Bouzouki Player‘ is a non-fiction first person account of the South African War of Apartheid, the SWA/Angola Border War which has sold steadily on Kindle ever since.

My second book is a novel, published in 2015, ‘One Day in Paris’ recalls one year in the life of Dan Blake, a former soldier, based on a personality amalgam of highly trained soldiers I have known, who plans an attack on Paris in a Political Thriller which presciently foretold the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris. It includes my take on the Macroeconomic detail of how elite profiteers work the Armaments Industry underpinning the US economy. Dan Blake is a complex character, possessed of an enormous skill set, educated to the highest level, trained to kill optimally. Blake is motivated by a cocktail blend of mental irregularities including; PTSD, narcissism, superiority complexes empowering invincible arrogant over-confidence, depression arising from a failed marriage and furious anger following his unfair discharge from the army. A man living with the ghosts of a lifetime at war as an elite British Army officer working counter Insurgency. He achieves a new level of power after love and marriage to the daughter of a trillionaire, the US senator, Bob Barrat.

Who am I?

I have been a professional musician, a competitive tennis player and a writer, popular with liberal readers of blog and book and offensive to right-wing conservatives and sharia-law advocates since I first learned how around the age of seven.

I have two sons, born 20 years apart.
I am a medical school drop out and a Computer Science graduate. I was forcibly conscripted to war once, for 2 years in South Africa’s Border war.
Activism themes in my books include;
…….Anti-war arguments, awareness of the military industrial complex as raised by Eisenhower, drug laws that create a black market, being the gateway to criminality, financing more than 1/3rd of the worlds terrorism simply to service demand in the USA.
…….Big pharma, working with drug-laws to service demand for commercial benefit by criminalizing users in a for-profit legal system, instead of treating addicts like victims. I have followed progress in; universal health care, universal income, and the end of all criminalizing-user drug laws. Equal education for all. USA gun law review and draconian punishment for crimes of stupidity, such as racism.

My specialist areas of interest  include;
……PTSD, homelessness; cause, effect and proposed solutions. Racism. Military history, especially the Greek war of independence, The American Civil war, The Two ‘Great’ Wars, The Iran Iraq war and the Angolan Border War.

I have been an outspoken critic of Kill-for-Fun hunters for many years, since I wrote the blog conflating Trophy Hunters with their real title – Kill for Fun hunters. I continue improving daily as a student of critical thought and information processing. I enjoy exploring  different cultures. Food and drink are like food and drink to me.

My most widely read themes in andrewbrel.com blog posts contrast Liberalism and Conservatism.

I try to boycott and avoid any business or individual associated with racism and the fascist hate of the conservative-right, or those who profit from the persecution and exploitation of minorities, whatever side they represent.
I am pro abolition of economic slavery and have been since before leaving South Africa in 1984.
………..Addressing broken legislation is a passion for me. Judges with qualified immunity making judgments that are anti-law threaten the fabric of our belief in a judiciary. Judges who, for example, use the N word socially, and express extreme idiocy in their writing cannot be empowered as they are without expecting tragic consequences. This includes the many Black people in for-profit jails for selling $10 bags of Cannabis while Capitalists profit from legislation selling cannabis legally. Sentenced by Conservative racist judges who remain largely unaccountable. Example; Mark Chiavarella and Michael Conahan. This same approach is endemic in family Court, especially in Britain. You can read the example of British Family Court Judge Michele O’Leary here.

My behavioral interests include;
…..breathing, yoga, skiing, photography, walking and hiking, biking on two wheels, and swimming in water above 85F.

I have previously;
…….performed thousands of gigs as a professional guitar playing musician. Emigrated penniless from Johannesburg to London. Owned recording studios and a record label. Made and lost money in share-trading in the UK and US markets. Developed property successfully by spending less than the appreciation arising from that spend. I have organized meaningful fund-raising life-saving concert events. I have lived on very little while still indulging an appetite for preparing nutritious food. I  have watched my home burn down once and flood twice; experienced larceny on a multi million pound scale by a corrupt lawyer exposing the rotted inner workings of British Family Court. I have visited many great vineyards and I raised Wallace of Riverbank, for 15 years the worlds finest Schnauzer.  I have written several songs with meaning.  I have performed, recorded and befriended extraordinary world-class musicians. I have discovered loyal friendship as life’s great gift and betrayal of trust its most effective teacher.

I believe Britain’s family-law racket will one day be regarded as the worst offender against children’s rights since the Catholic church. I am equally hopeful that religion will be legislated as a hate crime within my lifetime, recognized as ‘The greatest lie ever sold‘.

I have worked in music composition and production for four decades. I enjoy creating music above all else, writing alone in my studio, or with ‘name’ writers. My favorite instrument is the recording studio.
Since 2001 I have worked in a specific genre of New Age music using solfeggio composition for ‘healing, meditation and wellness’. I have written and produced 12 albums of this music type which have migrated from remunerative sales numbers in the CD era, to streaming media plays all over the world, earning me .$.00026 (or less) every time they are played. Thank you Limewire and Napster for ending payment for music.
My 2019 album DEEP SLEEP is on Amazon Musics Sleep playlist and that has generated millions of plays.

Mostly my music has rewarded me in the form of letters from listeners sharing the positive effect my music has on their wellness.  A joy that motivates me to keep working at refining my compositional and production skills in this very specific style of functional music production. Relating to wellness.

I am most easily reached by Facebook Private message

Links to:
Amazon Page (Kindle and paperback and audio.)
From: APPLE BOOKS