Announced on his Facebook page only a matter of hours before each performance, and drawing crowds of up to a thousand at a time, Passenger's latest 'busks' have seen him perform in Manchester, Brighton and on London's South Bank outside the Tate Modern and they certainly haven't been disappointed in the quality of the audio.
Simon explains why he chose to use the LSP 500s. "I looked into this long and hard," he says. "The whole vibe of these gigs is that we need to be able to turn up anywhere and be completely self contained. We need a battery powered system because we don't want to have to get power anywhere. In fact, in a lot of places we go to we can't get power. And we need to be able to set up in five minutes.
"I got Sennheiser's Mark Saunders to give me a demo and I was blown away. I couldn't quite believe that such a sound came out of such a little tiny speaker. The fact that we can have a speaker, put it in a case and fly it around the world and it's still under 32kg blows my mind."
Simon's decision to use the LSP 500 system came just two days before they started busking. "I said 'can we get a pair?' They moved heaven and earth to deliver them to us and they're perfect!
"This is a really good test; it's music and although it's a guy on a guitar, it's a really dynamic show to do. It gets really intimate and then really loud. The fact that the LSP 500s can keep up is really impressive and the fact that I can have different inputs for the guitar, etc, and compress them is a lifesaver."
Passenger is currently appearing at various festivals around Europe including Belgium's Rock Werchter, Montreux Jazz Festival and T In The Park in Scotland, before heading over to the US in August.
(Jim Evans)
