36 l July 2013
www.psneurope.com
livereport GERMANY
Friendly fire
OMD are on tour in their original line-up, but with a brand new PA system in the armoury.
Dave Robinsonjoined FOH engineer Chicky as he lock and loads the Coda Audio ViRAY
“I HAVE a special weapon for rooms like the Roundhouse. It’s called ‘volume’.” PSNEurope is sitting
backstage with Charles ‘Chicky’ Reeves before tonight’s performance by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – AKA OMD – at the Hamburg Docks. “I don’t want anybody thinking, ‘Shall I get a beer?’ or, ‘Hey, that girl’s cute’,” continues Chicky. “I don’t want them to be thinking about anything else
apart from the sound. I want it to be just loud enough: not that it hurts, but that they can’t think about anything else; that they don’t miss anything, and that I completely hold their attention for 45 minutes.” It was the ‘volume’ approach to FOH mixing for Grace Jones at London’s Roundhouse in 2009 that led Chicky to being hired “almost on the spot” by OMD’s Paul Humphreys, he recalls.
Over three years later,
Chicky’s still working with the ’80s synth pop heroes as they hit the touring and festival circuit with English Electric, their 12th studio album and the second since the band reformed in its original early line-up of Andy McCluskey, Humphreys, Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes. Originally from Altanta
Georgia, Chicky is a resident Londoner who considers himself “mainly a studio guy who also does FOH”, though he admits the split is becoming more of a 50/50 thing. For the European leg of the English Electric tour (which started in the UK in April, dropped briefly into Brussels and Utrecht before alighting in Germany), he has been working with Liverpool’s Adlib Audio. As a trusted keystone of OMD’s live sound, Chicky chose both the PA and the console for the tour. “Originally we were going to
Chicky and his overtly digital FOH set-up
take a d&b system out. Then Adlib talked to us about Coda ViRAY: ‘Smaller footprint, packs a real punch, you’ll really like it,’ they said.” Adlib, already a user of
Coda’s LA12 big box system,
One person can assemble and hang a ViRAY array
was one of the first PA companies to make a substantial investment in ViRAY after its launch in October of 2012. The Liverpool PA house went on to purchase more cabinets before this OMD tour. But it was with some trepidation that Chicky approached the system, what with him being such a d&b fan… “Pardon my language,” he
says, adopting a suppressed shout, “but I fucking love it! I won’t tour with anything else. It’s very ‘present’, it throws very well, we’ve played in big places and it just fills the room really nicely! I love this system and Adlib has been fantastic.”
Chicky has worked with
Capital Sound and Clair Bros before, but never Adlib, so the English Electric tour has doubly won him over. “We’re certain that Adlib and Coda is where we are going to go. I’m so thrilled… And that one guy can hang [ViRAY] up on his own in about an hour, that’s terrific!” ViRAY was used on all but
three of the 13 UK dates, and will be deployed to all five German venues. It’s generally hung with 13 boxes per side, rising to 16 in the bigger halls. Chicky expands on his Damascene conversion to Coda. “One of the things was, I had my back to the ViRAY system
Andy McCluskey grabs his bass guitar for another
energetic OMD performance
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