Nadia Von Hahn and Jean-Paul De Roover Live @ The Mansion

Sunday night at the Mansion brought Jean-Paul De Roover and Nadia Von Hahn to town.

This was the first time that I have been to The Mansion on a Sunday night for a show. I was surprised at the amount of people who did filter in throughout the night for the show. Maybe it was the fact that I knew it was a Sunday night but the atmosphere in The Mansion felt a little different more of a laid back feel.

Up first was Jean-Paul De Roover. This was one of his last shows on his current eight month tour before he heads back home. I heard earlier in the night that he was a one man band but by looking at his set-up I would have never guessed at what I was about to see. Armed with one acoustic guitar, drum machine two microphones and a recording loop machine he was truly a new brand of one man band. His performance borders along more of an art movement infused show then a specific genre forced performance. During the first song I was left intrigued by the song as a whole rather then just a song that was played. To go into details about this you really have to see him play live, but I shall try my best but I know I may leave out a couple of details. The main force behind his performance is his loop recording sound system. Each song takes about a minute or more to setup, as he records his vocals, and guitar, and beats on the loop pedal. I asked why he does this instead of the conventional band in the box and the answer I got made sense of his entire performance, you are watching him create his art form live which makes his set an entire show in itself. For his last scheduled song he covered a Radiohead song accapella style which was very interesting. After he finished the song he was getting cheers for more, which he obligued after checking to see if it was okay from Nadia and The Mansion, so to finish out his set he played a Spanish song with Spanish lyrics. www.jeanpaulderoover.com to check him out.  

The Tour which Nadia Von Hahn is currently on is in support of her debut album Wait And See What Happens.  I was surprised to see that a drummer didn’t accompany the band on stage, it turned out that the drummer was not able to make the tour this time around. What were left onstage were a guitarist and bassist and Nadia Von Hahn on Keyboards. They incorporated a couple of different instruments within their performance with the addition of a Ukulele, acoustic guitar and a Kazoo which was thrown in as well. There was a little problem with the patch cord for the Ukulele at the start of the song so while making some pretty funny jokes with alternate words for the instrument Nadia compromised and sang a solo acoustic song with Vocals that just totally made her entire performance shine out for me. What was so exceptional about the song was the fact while the acoustic guitar could be faintly heard throughout the song due to the fact the sound man was still trying to figure out the problem on the other side of the stage, Nadia’s vocal performance rained supreme throughout the song and I would say made it difficult to out perform this song with the rest of the set. Nadia’s musical sound as a band bounced around a little bit as she still hasn’t found her own specific sound as she is still experimenting with a backing band. An example of the different genres/Sounds would be a couple songs had a influence of Jazz, House Lounge/Lobby, Pop and Retro. I have to add in the retro because of the bass guitar.  I was surprised at how hard the bassist was plucking his strings and hitting his Bass, it gave a couple of the songs an edgy/pop sound. While playing songs of the new album Nadia also played one cover song as subsequently the only cover song they play right now, as they are more focused on their own music then others.   www.NadiaVonHahn.com