He is more melodic , uses various scales and modes (he surely learned lots of exotic scales & dissonance from Friedman)... His music is much more complicated than anybody else , not to mention his awsome feeling and soul playing (one of my friends cries when he listens to "Altitudes" , specialy the last part).
I believe that if this guy just had a chance to record a couple of more solo albums , he would have been INVINCIBLE !
Perpetual Burns is still very hard to be touched anyway.
And yeah , he's the one & only sweep god ... Even Michael Angelo , Malmsteen , and other sweep heads couldn't even get near his sweeping technique .
