The season started with 'Til The Cows Come Home festival, which took place in Bedfordshire at the beginning of July. The independent festival - with an elite 500 capacity - featured an eclectic mix of bands on one stage. Acts included the 9-piece band, P-Hex; The Retro Spankees; Whisky Cats; Delphian Complex, who have supported New Order and Primal Scream; mod-ska British band, Bowfinger; and the Lazarus Plot, who have supported the likes of Supergrass and Shed 7.
"A small portable board was needed for a quick and easy set up, so I selected a 24-channel GL2400," explains Up All Night sound engineer, Ed Shackleton. "The desk has a small footprint but with enough ins and outs for the job, and there was capacity for four monitor mixes run from FOH, and still two more auxes spare for FX sends. The GL2400 did the jobadmirably, and as usual band engineers were more than happy with the setup."
Next in the diary was the UK's biggest independent outdoor metal festival - Bloodstock Open Air, attracting leading metal bands from around the world to its two stages. Shackleton explains: "We employed a 40-channel GL2800 on stage two, so we had plenty of channels to play with. We really went to town on mic'ing as there were decent changeover times, hence using four microphones for two kick drums, two mics on snare, hi-hat, ride, and overheads, four or five on toms, two mics on each guitar amp, and two channels for bass. Monitors were also run from FOH, and we had spare channels to split the vocal mics into separate channels for monitoring purposes."
Up All Night hosted their own arena at Lovebox, held in London's Victoria Park in July. The festival has developed from Groove Armada's London residency, and is now the largest dance festival in the capital, attracting over 35,000 revellers, with headline acts including Mr.Scruff, Jamiroquai and a Groove Armada full band set. The Up All Night Arena staged new and up-and-coming bands, including Misty's Big Adventure, Fliptron, Horsebox, the Deadbeats, and Robots in Disguise.
"There was a crazy mix of bands, and a lot of them with zero changeover times. We also had extreme noise restrictions due to the central location of the festival," explains Shackleton. "I again selected a 40-channel GL2800 as the large number of inputs enabled fast changeovers, and gave us the ability to cope with hugely varied stage set-ups, which included strings, DVD players, and Rhodes pianos."
By far the greatest challenge of the summer was the Secret Garden Festival, held in August in Cambridgeshire. Up All Night had their own stage, hosting a line up which included Los Skeletones, Milk Kan, The Suffra Jets, Seal Cub Clubbing Club, Drug Dealer Cheer Leader, and Kovak.
"We mixed 60 bands over three days, and it was the wackiest variety of bands you could ever dream up, from crooners to Irish celidh bands to inimitable strangeness like Thomas Truax," describes Shackleton. "I needed a portable board for this festival and opted for the 24-channel GL2400. It fit the bill perfectly due to the small footprint, and because it's really simple to use and quick to set up, changeovers were made much easier."
Other equipment employed for these festival dates included a Peavey QW rig, with Klark Teknik Helix EQ, TC/Yamaha/Lexicon FX, Drawmer gates, DBX and Focusrite comps, and a selection of Audix/Shure/Sennheiser/Audio Technica mics.
(Chris Henry)
