"The music is quite dense and layered," he said, "so I spend a fair amount of time adjusting fader levels." Findlay is using a Yamaha PM1D for mixing, and this is his first time back at live engineering for a decade. "These new consoles are amazing to me, truth is it’s a novel experience for me to move a fader just slightly and be able to hear a difference. And being able to take snapshots of songs - well, it’s fantastic compared to what I was used to with the Blue Aeroplanes 10 years ago." Findlay has spent the intervening years working for Peter Gabriel at his Real World studios, so he is no stranger mixing in the digital domain, easily availing himself of the desk’s programmable features.
For the tour, Findlay has just two small racks of off-board equipment, but uses little of it: "I basically inherited this system from Jim Warren, Radiohead’s engineer, who started the tour off. I do use a little bit of Tube compressor on the Bass guitar, and some delay, but with processing available on every desk channel there are no restrictions; you want to try a little compressionon on Peter¹s voice and it¹s right there at your finger tips, and it sounds very good."
The tour moves back to the States next, and the show will be totally reconfigured for playing the ‘Shed’ circuit. It will be a simple change for Findlay: "I just need to take my show disk with me, plug it into the PM1D over there, and straight away 95% of what I’ll need is right there."
(Lee Baldock)
