Audiosquid

A Busy Month. September comes to a close and we prepare to depart for London tomorrow. Fall is just starting to edge it’s way in here in NY, too bad we will miss all the trees when they change color. It’s been a very busy month. Getting things prepared for the European tour, rehearsals, and recording some B-Sides for an upcoming singles release. We recorded 3 songs, and did it all on my powerbook with Digital Performer 3 and the MOTU Firewire 828 interface. The interface is very, very cool. It was a bit of a rush project, and I was re-patching to record rehearsal during the day and record b-sides at night. DP3 was pretty cool, some nice touches to the new version. The only problem so far is some crashing while bouncing to disk in certain situations, and I can’t go back to the finder while a project is open, or it crashes. Otherwise it worked out as well as could be expected.

Now onto the tour. It will be good to settle into the bus. A couple of days of rehearsal in London before our first show in Cork, Ireland, and the all so fun “disco load out”, I’ll have some gear from SSE to supplement what the venues have or are providing, along with some new gear that I and the band have purchased. I will also be mixing the opening act at most of our shows, Nicolai Dunger.

Catching up! So long since the last bit of news and so many things that have happened, but now all is dream. Currently hanging out in upstate NY, getting things ready for the next tour starting in October in Ireland. Also some recording for some B-sides and a movie sound track. Delving into the world of Digital Performer 3. I wont be going back home until a couple of days before Christmas. Fun fun. But I am enjoying myself here in NY. As Jim Donnely said, in his fantastic book of writing entitled “Ass”, “Enjoy a city, but know some woods.” Show reports follow. Oh yea, and I’ve posted some new pictures, and an updated schedule for September into November.

Osaka and Tokyo. Best crews in the world. A wonderful time in a big reverberent room. Same gear at both shows, and charts for recall from a sound-check. I was not impressed with the Turbosound rig, but all sounded well. Spied a Clair Brothers I-4 rig on the main stage, though they had some wind flanging there mix outside. Hat’s off to the Cult’s sound engineer as he had it sounding awesome none the less. While the big stage dealt with wind, the second stage dealt with big reverberant rooms. Dave Fridman joins the Rev on stage for these two shows. Playing some keyboard and noise parts, even some very cool background vocals, kept me on my toes figuring out what was coming from where, in the end, I think the hum was coming from him…

Belgium – Pukelpop. Fun in a tent. An XL-4, TC M-3000, M-5000, TLA and Summit Compressors. You’re thinking awesome right? Well, it was, though the BSS Opel gear and the JBL HLA rig had me scratching my head. Can’t really tell its coming off a Midas XL-4 with some phat effects through the JBL rig. Oh well.

Leeds and Reading – A great Nexo rig supplied by SSE. Good crew. Soundcraft Series V which I like, though the Matrix section on the Leeds desk was being really strange. The tent at Reading was larger than the tent at Leeds, and with duplicate gear at each site, the Reading stage was a tad light on PA. Nobody bothered telling SSE they were going to have a larger tent. But all was fine, I watch the other acts throughout the day take it to it’s max and could tell it would be fine for me. Staind plays in our tent for some reason at Leeds while they play the main stage at Reading, and they bring there own monitor rig and monster drum riser, play early in the day, make the show run late, burn out the local crew, and give us, playing last, a 45min set compared to the hour we were supposed to have. For a four piece metal band. Drums, bass, guitar, vocals……. Oh well. Monitor engineer at Reading tells me the keyboard players in the Rev had the loudest mixes all day long, beating out many of the metal bands that had preformed earlier. Guess its time for a “you should try to protect your hearing / this is not going to work when we get into small clubs” talk. Band sounds damn good though, and the two new keyboard players have taken the trip up a level.

Gig On the Green – Great EAW 850 rig with a Heritage 3000 supplied by Perfect Beat. Too bad the acoustics’ of the tent sucked. Great crew, though I half of the time I had absolutely no idea what they were saying. Craig at FOH as system tech makes for a smooth ride, and while I thought he looked bored catching a nap while we were on, he replied he was happy not to have to “babysit” for a change, which I think I took as a compliment.

Black Sessions – Paris. A prerecorded radio show, an hour long concert in front of 300 or so people in studio. While there was a Europa and enough outboard gear to kill a horse at FOH, I spent my time in the control room assisting on mixing the show on a Neve. They sure did like spank the level on the console, and compression, lots o compression. We had a good time, the show went well, and the mix sounded pretty darn good. The real work was happening in the studio itself where I’m sure the house engineer had quite a challenge with a loud stage and a soft vocal. I hope he enjoyed himself.

Hello from European airspace. On the way to Japan, and only 10 more hours to go!

And hello from Osaka Japan. Got in a bit late today, so luckily we get to skip the production meeting that they always like to have right when you get to the hotel. Not too worried about the top notch crews that are here in Japan. The electrical bills must be insane here with all the neon, though Osaka isn’t quite as crazy as Tokyo. Will be good to get some rest tonight after the days sleep deprivation project as we hop from plane to bus to plane to bus……… Riding to the hotel, I can see where some of the cool road plans for Gran Tourismo come from.

Sound check tomorrow, another Yamaha desk, but this time the old school analog version of a PM4K. The lucky ones are on stage with a Heritage 3000. Oh well….

Some time off in London – Chillin in London with a couple of days off before we head off to Japan. What to do, what to do…..

Spain report – The show at Benicassim went well, considering it was the first show of the new touring party. The Meyer line array rig was on hand and I must say that it can be a very loud rig. Sounded very good, as many line arrays (especially outdoors) sound. The Yamaha PM-1D was a cool desk in many respects. Complete recall, eq on every input/output (nice to have eq on the aux send to reverbs), a delay on the headphone out to sync up local monitors with the PA. The compressors sound all right, but I wasn’t impressed with the FX section, basically 8 SPX-990’s built in. A very “touchy” desk too, when you tell it to do something, it does it. It didn’t crash on me, and with more time to set it up properly I could see using it more often. If they would only come out with a MAC version of the PC software you can use to set up the desk offline. Well, that, and I’d rather have a Midas 😉

London Show – In house Martin W-8 rig, not too bad of a room but the low end will mess with you from sound check to show. Gets better in the audience, but gets worse on stage. But no worries, they are tearing down the place for a tube extension

Busy, Busy, Busy – Getting Mercury Rev ready to hit the road. Making lots of cables, looms, running around buying stuff, making suggestions, advancing info, working out the puzzle of where to the rehearse, the puzzle of how to pack, and hoping the airlines won’t be to picky about some very large heavy pieces, and a couple of extra pieces, and……..

I’m am psyched to mix what is being produced in the rehearsal space, the first show in spain will be extra interesting as it will be my first time behind the Yamaha PM-1D, their fancy new digital desk. Quite a way to start off a tour, should be a blast.