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Cedric Willems is a belgian guitarist born in Ghent
- Belgium.
He got his first guitar at ten, and formed his first
band with some school fiends at 13.
He co-formed the local popular instrumental prog band
Graffitti at age of 15.
(Alex de Bruycker, Frank de Waele, Glenn Westelinck and later on with
Luc De Lil, Jan Boddaert and Ward Poppe)
It was a kind of sport among the band members for composing
the longest track.
Twenty minutes was not an unusual lenght .... where are the days .....
There was even a Mendelsohn inspired piece on the program, written by
Lucas De Lil
Once he composed a piece of 45 minutes .... as no one was interested in
rehearsing such a long piece,
he decided to leave the band.
Seventeen years old and temporaly enough of bands, he
took some classical guitar lessons with
Anne Marie Vermaele.
After approximately one year he realised that this was nothing for him,
as he was only interested in improvising and composing, altough he learned
some nice basic skills from her for the right hand...
This was also the period that he heard Waso for the
first time, a gipsy band with great musicians like Koen De Cauter (guitar,
clarinet) and Fapy Lafertin (solo guitar), who played mainly Django songs.
Since then a lot changed for him. Improvising was the
basis for everything ...
Till now django is still an important influence.
This resulted in some formations, mostly acoustic.
Begin eighties he joined the band of French singer Danny
Laure (Peter Bauwens, Joris Peeters ....) which never came further than
a few months of rehearsals ...
In 1982 he formed the band Electric Rendez-Vous with
Luc Baetsle (drums),
Chris Thoeye (sax) and Wim De Vos (bass) .
A few months later the band was called Sundance.
Sundance was also the title of a track that was recorded on a compilation
LP of Belgian Bands.
It was recorded in one take and mixed by Peter Gillis .
It take not more than 6 hours in total (from which at least 5 hours for
miking, recording and mixing the drums .....)
The music of Sundance was Fusion and Jazz-Funk oriented.
Sundance ended after three years. In this period they played once for
a week in Perugia - Italy.
After Sundance he discovered multitrack recording, what
was the start of recording his own music
on 4 and 8 track recorders.
He also bought his first guitarsynth in this period, the famous Roland
Gr 500,
from Jo Bogaert (Technotronic, Nux Nemo).
In this period he jammed a lot with all kinds of musicians (Luc Baetsle
(drums), Marc Baekeland (Drums),
Jan Gorduyn (guit), Gert Keppens (bass), Guido van Milleghem (drums),
(both from The Bet),
Michel Vanderhaeghe (keys) and later on with John Snauwaert (sax) and
Jean Van Lint (bass) ...
With Michel Vanderhaeghe Cedric jammed a lot on a regular basis.
Besides jamming they made also a lot of tracks for multimedia.
It was also in this period (begin ninenthies) that Cellar tape (Aspects)
and Almost full Venus (The old ones)
were recorded, but remixed in 2007 and 2008.
All this experimenting and recording leaded to a mass of tracks.
In 2007 he released the CD Aspects, which contains 10 tracks of instrumental
guitar music
(with Cellar tape, recorded in the ninenties and remixed in 2007).
The year 2007 also ended with a gig with Vincent Goeminne (vocals, guitar),
Stijn Tondeleir (bass),
Lorenzo Wezenbeek (drums) Thomas Coene (drums) Eva Martens (vocals) Jo
D'hollander (vocals), Frank Vogelaere (keys)
In 2008 he started the project "The old ones",
with remixes from elder recordings which will be finished
at the end of 2008..
The "Gr 500 files "is also a project with elder tracks recorded
with the Roland Gr 500.
Meanwhile he is recording new tracks for both an acoustic and electric
project which will be available in 2009.
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