Luke Lockhart of production company, TF Music, is busy preparing for the show, which will see five bands play live sets over the course of the day for 360 Tune Box, an international broadcaster owned by SPI. TF is in charge of all things production, which constitutes setting up an eight-camera shoot [in 4k] and a 24-channel live recording setup. Lockhart and co. will be filming a string of different bands in various London locations over the coming weeks, before doing the same Stateside, if all goes to plan.
"360 Tune Box is kind of similar to Netflix; they have subscription channels, but they also do linear broadcast as well. In fact, they have over 25 million paid subscribers, and offices in every territory," Lockhart explains. "It's really good what they're doing, investing not only in established artists, but also new and emerging, too."
Headed up by Novelle Stephenson (ex-Def-Jam), 360 Tune Box is all about young urban adults whose musical interests are that little bit outside the box. Instead of putting the emphasis on global stars, the firm is all about variety and equality to all musicians. At Nambucca, TF is filming and recording for two of its channels: Fun Box, and 360 TuneBox.
"When Sonic Distribution first briefed me on DiGiGrid, I thought IOX sounded very interesting, but I was a little concerned that it was an Ethernet cable coming out of the unit rather than Thunderbolt or Firewire; would it be able to sustain the speeds needed for the audio transfer? However, I decided to trial it at a show at the 100 Club, where Andy Mitchell of The Yardbirds was performing, and the results were fantastic. The Ethernet was totally stable, and the audio quality was pristine - not at all hard, like a lot of digital audio can be. That's when I started to realise the real capabilities of IOX."
For Lockhart and his team, IOX is particularly handy not only for its small footprint, but its 12 mic pres, and 96kHz capabilities. "The great thing about DiGiGrid is, you can digitally control the input level of an analogue mic pre, which is just perfect. This is the territory I want to be in when I'm recording bands, and I can have two of these units working together, which gives me 24 inputs.
"Also, as they're such small units, when we're travelling, it's always nice and portable. When you're working this way, you want as quick a setup and break down as possible."
(Jim Evans)
