Andreas Willers: live looping review

["loop.pool" <looppool@cruzio.com>]

I had the privilege of hearing Andreas Willers perform tonight
in the show that we did with him headlining in Santa Cruz.

I was impressed when I first heard him in Berlin but was
really floored by him tonight.

He is a really deep musician;  drawing from jazz, rock, avante garde,
ethnic music and funk.    He has prodigious and extremely inventive
technique.
He also has a really great knack of playing an idiom and just when you 
think
that you can predict where he will go next, he completely turns it around 
on
you and heads off in another direction.

Sometimes extreme eclecticism can be distracting or unsettling but not so 
in
Andreas's case.     I must have laughed out loud a half a dozen times at
just
how clever and inventive he is.    He pulled out a dozen kinds of 
intersting
strumming
and tapping techniques while playing very lyrically...............then he'd
turn around and
shred like the heaviest big hair metal types.

His use of the EDP was both strong and subtle.   I'm very familiar with
techniques used on that instrument and yet he frequently completely
confounded me by his use of subtle techniques.

It was a fascinating show and if anyone gets the chance to catch him at the
Vancouver Jazz Festival coming up in a day or so you should really try to 
go
check it out.

I also really enjoyed the set by my brother (is it nepotism if you truly
enjoy a siblings's music?).
He eschewed his big Repeater/Synth guitar rig for the second concert in a
row, concentrating, instead, on a two Line 6 DL-4 lineup with his array of
beautiful guitars (acoustic steel string, weissenborn styled slide, souped
up stratocaster and his, 'honey I shrunk the guitar' mini strat).
One thing I particularly enjoyed was his use of half speed double speed
maneuvers where, by playing in three and using half speed he created a cool
2-2-2-3 phrased balkan styled 9/8 rhythm to play over.   He also cracked
everyone up with a "Mr. T" small hand sample toy.

All in all it was a truly enjoyable show.   I was only bummed that none of
the Santa Cruz live looping contingent made it out to see the show.   Too
bad,  they missed a really excellent night of music.