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A Massive Attack of Martin Audio
Immediately following their headline appearance at Bestival on the Isle of Wight, Massive Attack undertook a late summer tour of the UK - ranging from Academy rock venues to multipurpose halls in the 3,000-capacity area.
Carrying sound production provided by Wigwam Hire- with their visual set again dominated by the creative work of UVA - Robert ‘3D' Del Naja, Grant ‘Daddy G' Mitchell and their tribe (including guest singer Martina Topley Bird, Debbie Miller and long-time collaborator Horace Andy) have shown they have lost none of the experimental flair and challenging production values that characterized their early work, featuring singers such as Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser.
Common to both Bestival and their latest tour was the provision of a Martin Audio PA rig - a full W8L Longbow system on the Isle of Wight and Wigwam Hire's W8LC Compact line array on tour. This has provided immense comfort for the band's long-time FOH engineer, the experienced Dave Bracey - best known for his work with Robbie Williams - and his system tech Richard ‘Basil' Ferneley - another long-time Massive man, who has also mixed a number of their shows (as well as handling monitors for Annie Lennox, FOH for Ronan Keating and Delirious, and acting as FOH tech for Blur).
With a pool of five backing singers (which varies from tour to tour), and new arrangements of old material to contend with (nine of the 16-song repertoire represent reworkings of back catalogue), requiring 52 inputs on the DiGiCo SD7 desk, there is plenty for Bracey to consider. The transposition of 3D's studio produced soundscapes into live profiles is something he now has down to a fine art. "The mix is totally dependent on how they play the song," he says. "It's often not possible to play it the way it was recorded, and I mix it accordingly - in many cases deliberately not having listened to the recorded versions."
Wigwam Hire have long been Massive Attack's preferred supplier, and when the Martin Audio W8LC Compact Line Array was presented as an option Bracey's eyes lit up. "I was so impressed with this rig last summer, where we kept coming across it at festivals across Europe - that I chose it for this tour.
"I had been able to compare different line arrays but looking back at my favourite six gigs of last summer, it was this PA that kept cropping up.
"I much prefer the sound to anything else we could have taken out and when we opened the tour at Brixton Academy , the W8LC was the best sounding PA I have ever mixed through at Brixton. The coverage was amazing."
At Brixton they had rigged 13 x W8LC enclosures a side, with four-hang Martin Audio W8LM Mini outfills, but Basil Ferneley says that they have pretty much been designing the system to suit each venue on a daily basis. "I would go into each venue at 8 o'clock in the morning, measure the room, then with Martin Audio's DISPLAY [predictive software], decide on numbers of boxes and array settings, including processor tweaks."
Despite his extensive experience this is the first time he has operated in partnership with Dave Bracey, and the first time he has used Martin Audio's proprietary DISPLAY software. After brief induction training from Martin Audio product manager, Jim Cousins, he immediately took to the package.
"I have learnt a lot about the system - as some venues have had balconies and some not, and it's important to get the right split. Brixton for instance, was done in one bend. But depending on balconies I have been able to repatch the system using either the near-field, mid-field or far-field processor settings to get the optimum coverage."
Dave Bracey says that this meticulous attention to detail has paid dividends in configuring the three way system for each venue. "We have been following the Martin Audio plots to the letter and we have been extremely happy with the prediction software - using their processor settings, along with some of our own logic and sometimes treating it as two hangs instead of one. The settings are always zoned in the correct manner."
System control is handled wirelessly by XTA AudioCore domain; all the processing is contained in the digital domain until the analogue signal is fed to the Martin Audio MA 2.8s amplifiers, which drive the system.
Production is carrying neither Martin Audio Downfills nor Delays - but is using tiny Martin Audio WTUBs on top of the ground-stacked subs for some discreet front fills. "These are nice and wide, but most importantly small and unobtrusive," says Dave Bracey.
The final word on the Martin Audio line array system comes from the FOH engineer. "I am as impressed now using the W8LC system hands on as I was when I was presented with it at festivals last year. It does exactly what it says on the tin."
With Danny Stead on monitors and James Baseley production managing, the tour now heads to Europe in preparation for the release of the band's long awaited album LP5 (for which the current download EP, Splitting The Atom, is a curtain-raiser).
In picture: Basil Ferneley with Dave Bracey.
30th September 2009
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