Agree to disagree.Not for me. It’s the Devil and in a bad way. Lots of water and soap/cream with minimal air is the home of my best shaves. I need as much as possible on my skin and nothing is needed above my skin.
I always bowl lather. I think the key to getting the water/lathering product/air ratio correct is to slow down the swirling speed and to curtail its intensity.
If air is not an important component of lather you would be better off just taking a tiny bit of cream onto your fingers and applying it gently to a wet face. Even paintbrush motloms with the brush serve mostly to introduce air into the mix.
And by the way, one can get a perfectly good shave by just applying a thin layer of cream to a wet face. You get all the slickness of a regular lather, perhaps even more. Plus your cream will last forever. But for me the function of lather is more than just slickness. Getting the ratio of water, product, and air just right is the whole purpose of using a brush to lather, imo. If you don't want air, it is probably better to omit the brush.