DiGiCo SD8 at monitors. Meanwhile the tried and tested formula of Meyer Sound MILO line array continues, following last year’s doubling of field delay towers from two to four. “That made a huge difference,” he says. “We do the FOH and
commitment to production values. What I like most is that they’re focused on delivering FOH sound to pretty much the whole field.” At Roskilde, they’re hanging on to the XL4s for now. But, according to Nordic Audio’s
“Where else could you send your kids in among strangers knowing they will be perfectly safe?” John Penn
control, and a Slovenian company bolts on the delays – which helps with our trucking costs. Large LED screens have been brought in, and it’s a match for Glastonbury or V in quality. There is a big
Thomas Christensen, things are changing. “More and more engineers are bringing their Profiles, PM5Ds and PRO6s, and this year we’re seeing the Midas PRO2 and PRO2C on the riders for the first time.” The
Photo: Andreas Houmann
Top: La Roux at Sziget Festival, Budapest, Hungary Bottom: Roskilde (2011), Denmark
system remains as last year, when Nordic won the tender to take over the main stage: 72 L-Acoustics K1s, 36 KUDOs and 24 KARAs. That, says Christensen, was a commitment to quality that reflects the festival’s number one priority: live music. “There’s no background music or DJs between sets,” he says. “When the bands aren’t playing there’s a fantastic array of installations and attractions to engage people, then it’s back to the main focus – the music.”
PROMOTIONAL TOOLS For SSE founder John Penn, good production values extend to all the details that turn these sites into weekend social idylls. “Where else could you send your kids in among tens of thousands of strangers, overnight, knowing they’ll be perfectly safe?” he says. “The properly run festivals have marshals patrolling the camp sites, preventing most crime. Compare it with the early years of The Isle of Wight: people in uproar, putting the shutters up, saying the hippies and their drugs are coming to wreck society! Today people welcome the boost to the local economy. Plus it’s a family thing, multi-generational. Musically, there’s something for every age.” And lest we forget, tickets are not sold on the back of rental
company reputations. The promoter’s job is to appeal to a changing demographic – a public thirsty for fun and blissfully unaware of cardioid subs. “Nobody comes to a festival simply because there’s good sound, or good toilets, or good catering,” points out Festival Republic MD Melvin Benn. “They come for the ambience, and for the artists that are playing. Of course they want all those other things as well, but they’re not the reason they come. You can’t engineer the ambience; you can assist in its creation, but the audience brings much of it themselves.” From suppliers, Benn expects
more than ‘certain’ standards. “I’d go as far to say that we expect the best standards. If I don’t consider the company I’m employing to be the best for doing that stage, they wouldn’t be doing that stage. They all bring a level of skill and expertise to match each other. We have fine exponents of all aspects of live entertainment – audio, lighting, staging – great teams of people.” So: don’t move the site; connect fibre-optics; add more delay towers; hire campsite marshals; and keep the back- stage entourages in tequila and scented candles. Can’t go wrong. PSNLIVE 2012