www.psneurope.com
July 2013 l 37
livereport The stage before the crowds arrive
Vile behaviour: Martin Swan and Anais Neon
A VILE ENCOUNTER
[at the production day before the tour], and it sounded like I had the speakers right behind me because the presence was that good… but I was 40ft from the stage.
“I can push so much low end [into the system] – and at a live gig I’m close to pushing it to its limit – so you can feel that kick drum in your chest, that’s the most important.” He did warn us about his use of weapons… “Touring with this Coda rig is something I would like to do continuously because I’m hearing things I’m not able to hear on any other system: the separation between the kick and the bass, and the keyboards and the vocal stuff,” he gushes. “I mean, I’m hearing things that I’m able to hear in my studio! I mix on Focal Twin 6Bes, and with those you get a lot of separation, a lot of detail. I mix hi-fi stuff, basically. And ViRAY is like a really loud hi-fi.” Chicky’s desk on this tour is
an Avid D-Show. “Partly because, even though there are only four guys on stage, it’s such a complicated show to mix… so many cues, so much ducking between vocals and keyboards, and all five kick drum channels – yes there are five – those and all the bass instruments, which are coming from four different places… I couldn’t switch to another console unless we spent about four days in production rehearsals to transfer – which would be fine, but there’s always so much going on.” There are 23 monitor mixes to manage, he describes, a combination of IEMs and wedges. “There’s a lot going on for a band that doesn’t have
Kenny Perrin is the Adlib engineer who assists Chicky when he requires it, and also mixes the support act. For the five German dates, the support is the Vile Electrodes from St Leonards, with their bamboozling banks of live analogue synths. (Full disclosure here, readers: they’re my mates, and therefore I think they’re fantastic.) “I love the older Coda system, the LA12, but I’d not heard the ViRAY before,” says
“You should see my studio,
it’s completely different: valve console, everything!” Why so much mixing in
the box? “I got sick of carrying two Paul Humphreys on keys
guitars. It’s a very loud stage, maybe 98dBA… which is another reason why I love this PA because it can easily cut above and through that.” Back in the day, OMD
created straightforward popsongs with simple hooks and unfussy arrangements: think of Electricity, Enola Gay, Maid of Orleans, Souvenir (all of which will feature in tonight’s setlist). “Their old stuff is like that,”
he agrees. “The newer stuff is quite electro, with a lot of stuff going on all the time. I have to ride the elements, creating separation between verses and choruses, doing crazy splashes so you can feel the chorus rush in… effectively live production. He expands on this: “I don’t
let more than four bars go by when there isn’t some kind of change – that last snare beat at
the end of four bars, you’ll hear a long reverb on it, for instance – a ‘splash’.” His favourite plug-in is the Classic Console from (the now seemingly defunct) URS, which sits on “just about” every output for low-end tape saturation, compression and four-band EQ. There are some Massey plug-ins in the mix too, another unusual choice. Chicky runs Logic’s MainStage for further processing using Waves plugs for those reverb splashes and vocal effects (but not for backing track playback – that’s from Pro Tools). “I also have a Korg KAOSS
pad which I use for all Andy McCluskey’s vocal effects – it’s built-in tape delay is just beautiful.” It’s a very digital show all
round, then. Coda Audio SCP subwoofers
racks with me everywhere. Live, I can get the sound I want like this.” His microphone choice is nothing special: a Shure beta58 for the lead vocals for instance. (“I’ve thought about switching to Heil Sound mics, because it would be good to be a bit more directional, but we haven’t had a chance to try them out.”) There are SM81s on the hats, EV 408s on the snare and the floor tom. The kick drum is a combination of Shure beta91, Yamaha subkick and an Audix D6 which triggers two
Perrin. “I think it’s brilliant, for such a small box. And it goes up and down really quickly.” Perrin is often out mixing with touring comedians for Adlib. “For a person that chooses the bigger stuff like the LA12 for comedy, I’d be apprehensive to take out a smaller system, but it’s blown me away.” It’s perfect for OMD, he adds. “I think Coda will be an up and coming brand. I think it will be on a lot of specs in future.”
channels of sine waves, at 48 and 72Hz respectively for further low end muscle. “The moment the kick comes in during the ninth bar of the opener Metroland, it gets people’s attention. I don’t want to hurt anyone, I just want impact!” he laughs. The OMD song Enola Gay is
about the plane that dropped the atomic bomb in World War II. Later that evening, when the Hamburg Docks fills with the high volume, hi-fi quality ViRAY, and those kick drums hit the audience full-on in the body cavity, it’s clear there are much friendlier sonic weapons in town tonight, and Charles Chicky Reeves is the victorious Commander-in-Chief.n
www.adlibsolutions.co.uk
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