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| :: Gitarist (Holland) :: |
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Hiding behind the name 'Richie & Antti' are Richard Hallebeek and Antti Kotikoski. They have a four-album deal with the prestigious 'Legato' guitarlabel. On this label, led by Mark Varney, there have been albums released with big names shredding such as Allan Holdsworth, Frank Gambale, Shawn Lane, Brett Garsed and Carl Verheyen. You can take that 'shredding' part seriously, because a lot of the Legato albums use the same receipe: a simple groove, complex harmonies, and incredible powerful guitarchops. It's, in other words, music made by and for guitar players. It's common knowledge that the market for guitar music has been going down in recent years, emphasized by the fact that Relativity (Joe Satriani and Steve Vai's label) will switch to rapmusic in the future! Honour to Mark Varney for not letting this group of guitar players down still striving for technical perfection.
The 'Generator' album from Richie & Antti follows the same receipe as described above: a funky rhythm section with long layers of chords where the soloist can go ahead and go off. In that respect, it's unavoidable to compare this album to for example 'Truth In Shredding' from Frank Gambale and Allan Holdsworth. Richie & Antti are not from the same caliber( which is no disgrace at all!) Yet there is more then enough potential present to be very curious what the future will bring us from these two gentlemen. Besides that, Generator is not a strict duo-CD. From the 9 songs, Richie & Antti only perform three tunes together. They did compose everything together though. At the time of this pressing, Richard is already back in L.A. to record the follow-up to Generator; the new album will feature some more special guests like Allan Holdsworth.
If Richard works a little bit on his composing and gets a little bit away from his Holdsworth/Henderson influences, there will undoubtly be exiting times ahead of him!First impression: Fahrenheit, Persian RugM.R.
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