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Josh Barry
Last month, I had the great pleasure of visiting the legendary Jeff Wayne at his Hertfordshire home for an in-depth chat about his upcoming Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds: Spirit of Man tour coming in 2025. It was, as expected, an unforgettable and inspirational experience, hearing first hand from one of the most skilled exponents of his craft about the latest evolution of this absolute juggernaut of a production.
In addition to our conversation about the new show, we spoke at length about his history with the HG Wells sci-fi classic and how he continues to finetune it with each new outing. We also spoke about the role technology has played in enabling him to realize his vision with ever greater clarity. Of course, Wayne’s productions of War of the Worlds will always be rooted in the story and not the bells and whistles that adorn it, but the impact that innovations in AV have had on each new iteration of the show is undeniable.
As our cover feature explores, Wayne has continued to incorporate new technological innovations down the years not merely to increase the more spectacular elements of the show, but to continually enhance the experience for each and every member of the audience. Whether
Daniel Gumble Head of Contentthrough new advances in staging and props, crystal clear LED screens, or sophisticated audio systems, it is intriguing and exciting to see how tech is being harnessed to elevate the consumer experience.
Away from the stage, we also hear in this issue about how audio technology is being used in the realm of the screen, as BAFTAnominated composer Vince Pope chats to us about his extraordinary work on the likes of the new series of True Detective and Mr Bates vs The Post Office, while production sound mixer Steve Morrow opens up on how he approached the Oscarnominated Maestro.
All of which highlights not only the incredible work being done in the name of audio and AV today, but why the future of the industry is looking brighter than ever.
Queer South Africa-born, Los Angeles-based independent recording artist Kaien Cruz has released their self-titled debut album, KAIEN – a culmination of the diverse range of ebbs and flows the artist has experienced throughout their life thus far. Expect love, heartbreak, bliss, misery, and everything that lies in between. The 25-year-old singersongwriter’s debut single Love Me In The Dark was nominated for Song of the Year at the South African Music Awards, which led to Kaien opening for Justin Bieber’s Purpose Tour. Not bad for an artist who had only performed once in front of a handful of people, and who had no plans to be an artist…
Your debut single, Love Me In The Dark rose to the top of the South African charts, earning you a nomination for Song of the Year at the South African Music Awards. Were you surprised by the success, and had you always wanted to make it as an artist?
Growing up, the guitar was my little thing that I had for myself; I never played for anyone or sang for anyone. I’d never considered myself to be a musician or desired to even be a musician in any type of way. I would lock myself in my room when I was pissed off with my family and play guitar and write songs about how they annoyed me [laughs]. It was this personal thing for me for most of my life growing up, until I got to the end of high school. My parents were putting pressure on me to decide
what I wanted to do with my life. I also played a lot of sports; I was an athlete growing up and played a lot of soccer and field hockey, so I was like, ‘Well, maybe I could do that; that seems like something I’m good at and I don’t mind it’. I got a full ride for soccer to a local uni in South Africa and I tried that for about six months, and dropped out. My parents weren’t very happy about that! But simultaneously, the universe aligned things perfectly without me even knowing. I had released my first song with a local DJ, his name was Sketchy Bongo, and that song was Love Me In The Dark. I had written that song in my flat at uni on a guitar. I had no intention of doing anything with it, but my sister said, ‘What’s that song? I’ve never heard that before’. I sing it and she’s like, ‘We’re gonna go record this song. It’s happening. I don’t care what
“I HAD NO INTENTION OF BEING A SINGER. I NEVER PLAYED FOR ANYONE OR SANG FOR ANYONE!”
you say’. So my sister was the one that pushed me into recording the song, which then gets remixed into this dance mix, and I guess the rest is history. The song kind of went crazy on radio and was in the top five in South Africa, which was so insane to me. It felt like it happened overnight. Coming from a small town where I had no intention of being a singer in that sense, to then hear my song that I wrote in my room playing on the radio, and people are singing the lyrics. It was definitely insane!
As a result, Justin Bieber handpicked you to open his Purpose Tour to a crowd of 90,000. Tell us about getting that call…
I was sitting in the same apartment on the couch and I got the call from the producer who had mixed the song. He’s like, ‘You’re never gonna believe this: The label just contacted us to open for Justin Bieber’. I think it was the next month or something. I was like, ‘The Justin Bieber?’ He was like, ‘Yes, that one’. I think prior to that I had done one small acoustic show for a couple of people and never had performed in school. I never sang, I never did the talent shows, I never was on stage. I remember sharing the information with the rest of my family. It was unbelievable joy and excitement that one of us from this small town
was going to suddenly be sharing the stage with Justin Bieber. It was almost out of a dream. I was like, ‘People are gonna have no idea who I am’. The music starts, I come out on the stage and people are screaming, they are singing the lyrics. I didn’t expect people to know the song and for people to be as hyped up as they were; it was so magical. Getting off that stage, I was like, ‘Yep, confirmed. I’m doing the right thing. I’m in the right place’.
More recently, you released an alternative version of Afropopinfused anthem I Lay. How did the alternative version come about and did you always want to hear it with a feature?
The song as a whole has a very interesting story. I was sitting in L.A. in my room at the time and had just come off of a dry spell of writing. I hadn’t written anything in maybe a couple months, and as an artist, when you haven’t made anything in a while you start questioning yourself: ‘Am I even good? Can I even write a song? Am I ever gonna write another good song ever again?’ I was sitting at my desk on my laptop and I was like, ‘You know what? Let me just do what I used to do back in the day and go find some YouTube beats and write something for fun, just to get my muscles flexing again and to get into my flow’. I
landed on this instrumental, and it is the one that is on I Lay. I listened to it, and I was like, ‘Huh. I like this. This is something I didn’t expect to find on YouTube. But that’s cool’.
I pull it up to my Ableton and freestyle some melodies. Ten minutes into me freestyling, I was like, ‘Wait, I really like this. This feels like an actual song’. So I ended up writing the whole thing and doing all of the vocals – exactly how you hear it now. I recorded it in my room and it took me around 30 minutes to finish the whole thing. I sent the song to a couple people and they were freaking out about it, so I knew it was good. We released the song, and it just started doing really well, so I was like, ‘I feel like a feature on the song would go really well.’ I had no idea who it was gonna be, but I had it in my mind. I had heard of Xenia before, but I had never met her. I sent out the song and the next day, she sent it right back and she’s like, ‘I did a verse; Let me know what you think’. I was like, ‘Damn, that was quick’. I pull up the song and I play it through my speakers and immediately she comes in with the first line and I was like, ‘Yep, this is it. No edits required. We are releasing this’. It took the song even further and elevated it even more.
I Lay is an anthem about the power of intuitive love and cosmic energy. You mentioned it has an interesting story behind it…?
The story behind the song is that, personally, I was going through a huge transition. I just ended a two year relationship and was stuck in this weird place. I had been making a lot of space in my life for new people and trying to connect with myself. I sat down to write the song and around the same few days, I had just met someone. It’s like when you meet someone and as soon as you walk into the same room as them, the energy shifts, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, what is that? Who are you? I don’t know you. But I feel like I know you already’. I had that cosmic feeling when you connect with someone that feels on your same wavelength – almost like a godsend. So that is kind of what inspired the song, and fast forward, I am now dating that person!
You just released your self-titled debut album, KAIEN. What is the concept or meaning behind the album?
It is an amalgamation of my life, my experiences, my culture and a sense of being very mixed and growing up around a lot of different sounds, genres of music, people, languages and also in my own world. It’s also my own personal experience. I’m someone that lives a lot in my head and I feel like this project really showcases all the things that go on in my mind and in my life. I’m very excited about this project being out because for the first time when someone asks me, ‘What type of music do you make? How would you describe yourself as an artist?’ I would just send them this project and say, ‘Here, listen to this. This describes me as a whole’.
What’s your favorite song on the new album?
I don’t know if I could pick one… but I love Grip. I love Explore I love Seasons. I love Tell No One. I honestly love every single song on there. I know it’s my music, but unbiasedly I would say they are no skips.
Do you have any new music plans you can share…?
I have a few things up my sleeve. My upbringing was playing guitar and writing songs on guitar, so I have this desire to do an acoustic version. So we’ll see how that plays out. That’s all I can say for right now…. But a lot more acoustic vibes to come. It’s something that I’m craving to do again to get back to my roots.
Is there anything people would be surprised to learn about you?
Well, Sedona is one of the biggest hotspots for UFOs. A couple of days ago I did a UFO tour, which is something that they do here, which is so wild. I honestly don’t care if people believe me or not, but I saw at least 10 UFOs! Before that I had maybe seen one, or one that I thought I’d seen, but it was so far in the distance you question yourself. But there were so many that it was just unbelievable. It’s something that you have to see to believe.
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In 2025, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds returns to the stage. Dubbed The Spirit of Man, this latest iteration marks the next evolutionary step in what has become one of the most successful albums and productions of the past half century. Headliner paid a visit to the man himself to find out about how technology continues to push the boundaries of the show’s possibilities, as well as how he almost embarked on a career outside of music entirely…
The sprawling grounds of Jeff Wayne’s resplendent Hertfordshire home open up before us, as Headliner drives through the gates of a real-life Wayne Manor. It’s a relentlessly rainy February morning, but the setting, much like our host and interview subject for the day, could scarcely be more welcoming.
We enter through a side door that leads straight into a home studio that
is at once magnificent and rather cozy. A Steinway concert grand piano is the centerpiece, while personal photos and mementos are scattered around much like one would find in a person’s living room, albeit some of them featuring A-list stars from the world of music and film. A small kitchen area, much like one would find in any modest studio, adds to the accommodating feel of the space.
Perhaps most intriguing is a corner of the room where shelves are stacked with all manner of The War of the Worlds memorabilia from down the years. There are models of the famous Martian fighting machine; branded shot glasses and tankards; playing cards; and in amongst them a smattering of awards, including a pair of Ivor Novellos. It feels part home, part studio, part museum.
After around five minutes spent browsing these artifacts we meet Wayne, who is instantly warm, charming, and affable. He speaks softly and eloquently about a variety of subjects. We discover he was a highly promising – and still highly competitive – tennis player, who was friends with legend of the sport Arthur Ashe. “The only player to double bagel me,” he laughs (double-bagel meaning two 6-0 set defeats in tennis parlance).
As we prepare to settle in for the next hour in a corner of the room, he shares some history about the illustrious musical heritage of the
place he has called home for the past four decades.
“The history of this place goes way back beyond the time that we first moved here,” he begins. “It was quite a major property. What you see today is about one third of what existed originally. There was a big fire in 1938 that burned down about two thirds of the property. The people who owned it were very good friends and acquaintances with royalty, politicians, entertainers, and this room, which is my studio, was originally an open plan ballroom. And Edward Elgar would occasionally bring his band, which was a string quartet or a chamber orchestra, and debut new pieces in the studio. I say regular prayers to Edward, please give me some vibe here! I need your help!”
There was a time, however, before Wayne would go on to commit further musical chapters to the fabric of his home, when a career in music was largely absent on the horizon. While his father (Jerry Wayne) enjoyed a career in music
and theater, the young Wayne was a Grade A student primed for a career in investigative journalism.
“It was a love of the idea of uncovering stories that needed to be told,” he reveals, explaining how and why his passion for reporting almost took his life and career in an entirely different direction. “My dad was a major artist from about 1950 and I saw him get blacklisted during the McCarthy period. He was what you would call a left-wing person who supported certain causes that today would seem quite modern, but it cost him his career.
“That led me to want to know why, even in his later years, living here, he would never bring up the McCarthy period. My wife would occasionally ask him about it and he would just put it into historic perspective, whereas I have remained quite angry throughout my whole life about what happened to him and many others who didn’t deserve the demise of a major career. But what it led to was moving to England.
“I got a journalism degree in California where I graduated high school and college, and my dad was working on a theater production based on Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, which ran at the Palace Theatre and did quite well. He asked me to compose the music for it. I got an AA (associate of arts) degree but instead of staying on for my Masters degree I switched to music. That led me to becoming the musician I eventually became.”
It was also via his dad that Wayne happened upon HG Wells’s literary classic The War of the Worlds. With a lingering love of storytelling from his brief time in journalism, Wayne’s father knew there was a way for his son to fuse this with his new musical career.
“It all goes back to my dad,” he says. “He started reminding me that I always wanted to find a story I could fall in love with, that said something to me, and that made me feel like I had a blank canvas to create from. Over the course of a year, I read a lot of wonderful books, and for one reason or another there was nothing I felt that passion for. Or it was so literate that I couldn’t find a path through. But it just happened that I was going on a tour and my dad came over to wish me luck, and he gave me this book, which was HG Wells’s War of the Worlds. I read it once and knew that it was saying something to me in a big way. It wasn’t just about a Martian invasion of earth, it was about the principles of invasion, of the principle of invaders from any nation, any army. And there were themes of love, hope, faith, and it had a lot to say in what was a short book. I could see a path straight in.”
However, before he could embark upon that path, a lengthy period of securing the requisite rights ensued.
“In the period I’m talking about, which was around 1973, the HG Wells novel was still in copyright, so we didn’t have the rights to do it,” he explains. “So, it took about three months.
Through an American law firm we eventually found Frank Wells, who was the son of HG and inherited his dad’s works - certainly The War of the Worlds. We met with Frank who had a set of agents and there were two main things that convinced them to sell us the rights. One was the fact that my idea was to do a true interpretation of HG’s story – keep it in the time it was set and keep with the themes, the times and the characters – whereas pretty much anything that had been done to HG’s The War of the Worlds was set in contemporary America, but I fell in love with a dark, Victorian tale.
“The other thing was that we were a father and son team that he liked. And quickly after that we acquired all the rights, other than feature film and TV rights associated with it, and of course the original book publication. Everything else we acquired, and I was up and running putting it all together pretty soon thereafter.”
Equipped with the rights and a clear vision for what he wanted to achieve in his musical retelling The War of the Worlds, Wayne could never have predicted the kind of success he would go on to achieve. Released in 1978 as a double studio album, it has sold an estimated 16 million copies
and has played to theaters and arenas the world over since its stage debut in 2006. Yet the juggernaut that it has become, Wayne tells us, was born from humble beginnings.
After reading and re-reading the original text – a hardback version of the novel that resides on a bookshelf behind us – he set about scribbling notes across his pages and piecing together ideas for what would become the blueprint for Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds
“The first chapter is called ‘The Eve of the War’ and to me it read like an overture,” he recalls. “It gave me the idea of composing an opening theme,
“I ALWAYS PROMISED MYSELF THAT I WOULD NEVER DO THE SAME TOUR TWICE.”
with a bit of singing, but mostly a theme that creates the sense of an impending event that’s going to take place, just as his story does. I thought if I succeeded with that then maybe I have an audience that would stay with me for what became a double album.
“It took about six weeks to compose the first draft of the score,” he continues. “I deliberately set myself a challenge, which is I booked the original band, and I had six weeks to arrange all the band parts and prepare for the session, not knowing I was going to complete it all and be ready. But I had gotten so proficient at meeting deadlines, so I set myself one by booking an expensive studio with excellent musicians and crossed my fingers that I’d have it done in time [laughs].”
Wayne’s incarnation of The War of the Worlds began to take on new life when it made its first foray into the realm of theater. When it made its stage debut in 2006, so began an ongoing period of evolution that continues to this day, as its score
and the technology that shapes it continues to develop and grow ever more sophisticated.
“I think where it has really evolved is since we started touring arenas,” he states. “I learned a lot from conducting to live audiences, and translating a double album to a live medium is a different thing. I never want to lose the heart of my score and the story, but there are a number of avenues we have opened up. I always promised myself that I would never do the same tour twice. That’s given it a life, as there are some people who have come back to see us and as we’ve built more and more shows so everyone is different. And technology has changed so dramatically that an idea one would have dismissed all those years ago is now pretty commonplace, and you use it in a way that gets the audience excited.”
From an AV perspective, technological advancements have enabled Wayne to expand the scope of the production.
“I’ll give you an example of something we started with and how it’s grown,” he elaborates. “And that’s our Martian fighting machine. It’s been with us from the start, is about 35 feet tall, weighs about three tons, and about half an hour into the story it descends having been hidden from the audience, and it lands on stage and fires its main weapon. It started off being laser lights, but now it’s real flames. It fires about 12 feet over the audience, and as the conductor I’m very aware every time it fires [laughs]. It’s an amazing bit of engineering.
“And we have gone from straight animation and imagery to more 3D effects. We now have multiple screens that we couldn’t have had many years ago. Just yesterday we saw a demonstration of a new LED screen that we are going to be using where the clarity is absolutely stunning.”
And what of the audio aspect?
“It was always an important ingredient to immerse – that very popular word now – our audiences in the arenas, and we did that with
surround sound,” he notes. “Our sound is placed and mixed for different reasons, but the quality of the sounds and the systems have evolved, and I’m going to be seeing a system next week that will demonstrate that sound can travel from front to back without missing out the middle of the audience in any way. That’s something we’ll be looking to bring to The Spirit of Man tour.”
Launching in March 2025, The Spirit of Man marks the latest incarnation of Wayne’s musical vision for the show. Featuring new music, Wayne explains how it seeks to address contemporary issues within the original story’s framework.
“Our focus is, without trying to be a lesson in politics and history, that we are living in a dangerous world,” he says. “It’s self-evident. And there is a duet between a parson and his wife who take the opposite sides of life, and it’s a duet called The Spirit of Man. The parson - the person you think you’d go to for spiritual comfort in times of need - is the first person
to go totally bonkers. He thinks the Martians are devils and only he can meet them and face them, but he has no hope for mankind. Whereas his wife believes there is something to live for, something to die for. It’s the thematic part of what they are saying, that is what I wanted to name the show around. It’s the heart of this story.”
To witness Wayne’s undimmed enthusiasm for The War of the Worlds first-hand is genuinely inspiring. Though his demeanor is gentle and unassuming, there is still a fire and ambition that radiates when he discusses The Spirit of Man and his plans to continue tweaking and expanding upon his work. At 80 years old, he exhibits no signs whatsoever of stepping back from proceedings. The key, he tells us, is to continue evolving without losing sight of what made him fall for the source material in the first place.
“I’m a fiddler,” he smiles. “I’m never happy. I always look back and think I could do things better. For the new show I’ve modernized some of the grooves; the sound quality we review every tour. I added a new song in 2014 and on our last tour in 2022 it became the name of the tour: Life Begins Again. It was appropriate because we’d just come out of Covid and it was like we were going to start again. This tour is not about trying to educate or take a view, but it has an emotional content that is appropriate for the times.
“I fell in love with a dark Victorian tale set in England. And to paraphrase our journalist who starts The War of the Worlds with ‘no one could’ve believed’, that couldn’t be more true about everything I’ve ever done!”
THEWAROFTHEWORLDS.COM
“WHEN BUSTA SAW ME FOR THE FIRST TIME HE WAS LIKE, ‘THIS IS THE ASSISTANT?’ NOW I SIT NEXT TO HIM EVERY DAY!”
Audio engineer, producer, and singer songwriter Delanie Leyden recently sat down with Headliner to talk about her career to date, including her extensive work with US rap legend Busta Rhymes on his latest album project, BLOCKBUSTA.
Starting out as an intern for The Music Development Agency at NYC’s The Cutting Room in 2015, Leyden wasted no time in landing a gig at Premier Studios the following year. Here she honed her engineering skills considerably, assisting sessions for the likes of DJ Khaled, Meek Mill, Ray J and Rick Ross, and working under some top engineers in the business, such as Ricky St. Hilaire, Los Vives and Gonzalo Contreas.
Leyden soon became one of the main assistant engineers for Busta Rhymes until 2018, and started to engineer for the rap star full time when she moved over to Penthouse Recording Studios as assistant studio manager.
“It’s so funny,” she begins with a wry smile. “We had a little group of us that worked at Premier, and my producer, who was the manager at the time, was assisting sessions for Busta. He was running late, and so it was between me and my other friend Jimmy, who couldn’t stay for the session. So Gonzalo, who was Busta’s engineer at the time, and who was one of my mentors, asked me to take the session. I was like, ‘why not?’ because I had nothing else really going on at the time.
“When Busta saw me for the first time he was like, ‘this is the assistant?’ - he’s a little bit hesitant with new people, and he was expecting someone else. They liked me and wanted me in the room, so I started assisting pretty much daily. Now I sit next to him every day!”
Leyden says the biggest record she has worked on to date is Busta Rhymes’ ROBOSHOTTA, featuring
global afrobeats artist Burna Boy. The track appears on Busta’s 11th studio album BLOCKBUSTA, which saw a release last November.
“I actually got to record Burna Boy for the track,” she reveals excitedly. “Another is OPEN WIDE featuring Shenseea and Chris Brown; initially Davido was supposed to be on the track and things didn’t work out, but recording Davido was another big moment for me.”
Busta Rhymes was back on the road last summer touring with 50 Cent, and Leyden, as his traveling engineer, was gladly brought along for the ride. Her mobile rig is minimal yet professional, running Pro Tools with a UAD Apollo and a Neumann U87 mic.
“I was with him for the majority of the American leg and we went to Dubai in November for Sole DXB festival, and that was one of the greatest experiences ever,” she laments. “It was celebrating hip-hop 50, and it was a beautiful festival. Then we went to Saudi because Bus did the opening ceremony for the FIFA Club World Cup. My parents met playing soccer, so that hit home differently for me.”
When it comes to her creative process, Leyden has learned over the years to simply go with the flow:
“I used to get so upset if I couldn’t come up with something,” she recalls. “I’ve learned a lot from Bus as an artist just from being around him. Nowadays I’ll often
just find a beat, vibe out to it, and have it on loop. Then I’ll record the melody and work the lyrics around it, although sometimes it’s the complete other way around! It’s different every time, so I just try to go with whatever feels right.”
Alongside her engineering duties, Leyden also has her own artist project called Lussx (a combination of Ludlow and Essex Streets in Manhattan). She released a four track EP called Mind Games back in September 2023, which she produced and mixed entirely herself, while her latest single – a Kaytranada-esque dance track called Bad Gyal – features rising artists FAMEtheMOVIE and HotBoii Johnny.
Leyden’s prowess as a rap and hiphop engineer led her to become acquainted with Augspurger Monitors – which have arguably changed the game for the genres –early on in her career.
“I’d heard the name Augspurger, and then when Penthouse was being built out when I was there, they became our main monitors in the studio,” she says. “Ricky St. Hilaire, who is another of my mentors and who has been Busta’s engineer for over 25 years, has always used Augspurgers for their clarity and quality, and so I quickly became used to working with them.
“Honestly, I love them so much. Maybe I’ve been spoiled, but if a room doesn’t have Augspurgers I get disappointed, and I have to adjust myself to working in there because I’m so used to their quality. They’ve changed the game for studios and engineers, especially those like myself who are working in genres with proper low end.”
As a woman working in pro audio, Leyden says she has seen positive steps being made towards leveling the playing field for female engineers.
“When I first started out, I didn’t know too many female engineers,” she admits. “But within the last three years I’ve got to meet some wonderful audio engineers who are women. Someone recently told me that Prince only had female engineers; that amazed me, and gave me a whole new respect for him just as a human being, let alone an artist. There’s still not much light shone on it, but there have
been so many of us throughout history and continues to be. It’s been so welcoming and refreshing for me.
“The biggest thing for me is being able to travel and engineer, doing what I love. I engineered the majority of this BLOCKBUSTA album, so it’s cool to finally show the world what I’ve been working on for at least two years. I’m now working on Busta’s next project and next batch of shows, my own artist project, and with an artist within our camp called FAMEtheMOVIE. It’s a bit of a crazy schedule, but I’m super excited for what’s coming this year.”
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On February 23, indie rock outfit Real Estate released their sixth studio album Daniel. Headliner joins singer and songwriter Martin Courtney for an in-depth chat about returning to the road for the first time since the pandemic, and “just letting Real Estate be Real Estate”.
There’s a hint of anxiety in Martin Courtney’s demeanor when he joins Headliner via Zoom from his New York home studio. The Real Estate singer and lead songwriter is one month away from the release of the band’s sixth studio album Daniel and its accompanying tour. It’s the latter that is causing him some consternation.
The band’s last album The Main Thing was released on the cusp
of the pandemic, meaning all live engagements were canned. As such, it’s been several years since Real Estate embarked on a tour of any kind, save for the odd show here and there, and Courtney has nestled snugly into a state of domestic stability.
“I’m looking forward to the album coming out and playing concerts, but I’m pretty nervous about the amount of travel,” he says. “The last few years have been really quiet, just at home with the kids, so I’ve really been a fulltime dad... but it is exciting,” he adds with a slightly nervy laugh and a smile.
It quickly becomes apparent that Courtney is the very embodiment of the Real Estate sound. The sweet, gentle melancholy that courses through so much of the band’s work is easily detectable in conversation with its chief creator. He speaks honestly and openly about both his passion for the band and the pull of home when faced with the prospect of being apart from his family. His tone is soft and a touch shy, just like his voice on record.
“We had to cancel our last tour due to Covid and I really felt the absence of that final step of making a record, which is connecting with people outside of my personal bubble,” he continues. “Writing a record is very solitary. So once you finally put it out you feel like it’s going to connect with other people, but if you don’t get the chance to play the songs and talk to people after the show… [pauses] so I am excited to get to do that with this record.
“But it’s impossible for me to imagine what it’s going to be like right now. I envision myself standing on stage with a guitar singing and it’s hard to imagine that happening because my life has not been like that for so long! I know it’ll be fun, but I have little kids, so it’s going to be hard to travel. I’m
dreading that, but there is the positive of being onstage and connecting with people, which is so much fun. But there is going to be a lot of sitting in a van being depressed wishing I could be with my family. Just to be totally honest with you… I’ve gone soft! It demands a lot that is sometimes hard to give. It can be brutal being on the road for anyone, but it does get harder as you get older, and you start to appreciate home life and stability. We went really hard for the first couple of years of the band, and I realized quickly that I didn’t like that. I try not to be gone for longer than two weeks at a time.”
At this point he laughs, as if acknowledging that he’s spent the first portion of our conversation focused solely on the drawbacks that come with the life of a professional musician.
“This is our sixth record, and it sounds like I have all these qualms about being a musician but I keep doing it because I really love making records, and I feel very fortunate to do it,” he says. “We get these opportunities and it’s like, why wouldn’t we make a record with this really cool producer and go to Nashville and do all these things I could have only dreamed of when I was a kid? I love writing and I feel like I still have music in me, so I’m going to keep doing it.”
Whatever anxieties exist around Courtney and his complicated relationship with touring appear to have dissolved upon contact with the recording studio, as Daniel is among the finest collections of songs the band has
assembled to date. Produced by The Silver Seas co-founder Daniel Tashian in Nashville over the course of less than two weeks, the record documents Real Estate at their most laid back and selfassured. Of course, there is a steady flow of melancholy throughout, but there’s a warmth and a confidence in its delivery, due in no small part to Courtney’s decision to channel his pop sensibilities to the fullest.
In this regard, it’s very much a reaction against its predecessor, 2020’s The Main Thing. In an attempt to stretch the parameters of Real Estate’s sound further than had been done previously, the band ended up spending longer than ever before in the studio. While still a rewarding listen, the effortlessness that has always been such a staple of the band’s work is conspicuously absent. And it would take a lockdown solo album (Magic Sign 2022) for Courtney to work out where he wanted to head next.
“As soon as I realized we weren’t going to be touring The Main Thing I started writing a bunch of songs that were for Real Estate, but the months dragged on so I took them to make a solo album,” he explains. “I needed to keep busy and I just wanted to have fun. The last Real Estate record we made we spent a lot of time on - it was a really intense process only for it to fall on its face. I was a bit burned and traumatized by that, so I thought I’d just make a solo record.
“WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS ALBUM IS THAT WE JUST LET REAL ESTATE BE REAL ESTATE.”
“I listen to it now and feel like I made some strange choices, and that process reset my approach to songwriting. That’s where I came up with the idea of just writing a pop record. I made that album, put it out, and then I’d usually be on tour, but I started writing again for the next Real Estate album and the first song I wrote was Water Underground. I really liked it and felt like it was an exciting direction. That’s really how this whole album came about. The writing process was in 2022 then we were in the studio in early 2023 and it’s coming out now. It feels like it was really quick, but it was a couple of years in total. It’s disturbing to me how quickly time feels like it’s moving these days. I was thinking about that yesterday, like, I don’t like this! I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older, but time feels like it’s just slipping away.”
One of the songs that best encapsulates the tone of Daniel is latest single Haunted World, which is released on the day of our conversation.
“That chord sequence, I’ve had recorded on my phone for 10 years and I never figured out how to finish the song,” he recalls. “It felt too poppy, but then this record came along which was me wanting to embrace the poppier side of my songwriting. I liked the idea of having a roadmap for this record, which is not something I’ve ever done before, like, ‘we’re going to make this type of record’. So, I listened back to
that chord progression and thought it would really fit with this batch of songs. Lyrically, like a lot of songs on the record, it touches on the Covidness of the times. It’s about how everything kind of looks the same but something is wrong, like, why do I feel so bad when it’s such a beautiful day?”
Part of the roadmap Courtney speaks of was the decision to make the record in close quarters with his fellow bandmates. For their past few albums, with members living in different states, songs and ideas have taken shape by way of email exchanges before entering a studio together to flesh out their sketches. This time, the band relocated to a shared house in Nashville, where they made the album in under two weeks with producer Tashian.
“We chose Nashville because Daniel lives there and we thought it sounded awesome to work there,” Courtney elaborates. “Also, it was a reaction to the last record. We spent a year in and out of the studio for a whole year. If you put all that time together, we probably spent two months in the studio, which is a lot for us and I didn’t want to do that again.
“And being in a different city, living in a house together felt like a nice way of doing it. You wake up and everyone is making breakfast and we drive to the studio together. It’s fun and feels very focused. And it came together even
faster than we thought. We finished tracking in about nine days.”
Over 15 years and six albums into their career, it seems Real Estate are still finding new ways to refresh their creativity and approach to making music. The sound they have cultivated during that time is unlikely to take too many drastic turns at this stage, but as Daniel demonstrates, their ability to keep evolving that instantly recognisable sound into something fresh with each record remains potent as ever.
For Courtney, the Real Estate sound is something of which he is rightly proud, perhaps more so than ever before.
“A criticism we have received is that a lot of our stuff blends together, although I feel like we’ve evolved over the years,” he reflects. “With our last album I think that got into our head, so we were thinking we really had to show we have range and was trying to push ourselves to do new things. It’s fun to do that, but one of the things I love about this album is that we just let Real Estate be Real Estate. Let’s just do what feels good and embrace the fact we have this sound and make the best record we can without trying to appease anyone’s expectations. I think this is our best record and I’m really proud of it.”
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Christopher Manhey – an independent researcher, award-winning composer and pioneer in the realm of immersive audio – reflects on winning two Latin Grammys for his work with Carla Morrison, how a unique Latin American strike tradition sparked his interest in immersive audio, and delves into what goes on at his facility, Omni Soundlab, a Genelec-equipped production and research studio in Chile.
Which projects did you win your Latin Grammy awards for, and where do you keep them?
The statues are in my studio! I won them for an album I recorded in Mexico for a Mexican artist called Carla Morrison. It’s a funny story because we were a kind of collective that lived in the same neighborhood in Mexico City. We were all emerging artists, and I knew how to record and to produce music. Most of them were artists, musicians, composers or songwriters. One of those people was Carla! It was a very collaborative project; it was literally recorded in our apartments. It was a very homemade album, and while we were recording it, we were joking around saying that we recorded it in the restroom, so ‘Let’s go for the Grammys!’ One year after, Carla went super, super viral, although at that time we didn’t have this viral
concept. It was by word of mouth. Everyone started talking about her because she’s so good, and then we got these emails, like, ‘Congratulations, you are nominated for this record: Best Alternative Record of the Year, Best Album of the Year, Best Song of the Year’ – four categories in total. My first impression was like, ‘What is this?’ Nobody on this team had a relationship with the academy or anything like that. Then we realised that Carla’s manager and her record label made the entry for the album. We were super surprised, because suddenly we had four nominations for the Latin Grammys, and we won two of those. Then we were nominated for the US Grammys with the same album. From that moment, for all of us involved in that project, doors started opening in the music industry. That was a pretty important moment where we moved
from being very unknown people in the music industry to being ‘someone’. It was incredible because we were not thinking about it and there were legendary artists nominated in the same categories.
You’re a pioneer in the realm of immersive audio. When did you first become interested in the possibilities that immersive audio presents?
It started with the strikes we had in Chile where most of the people went to the streets because we had a very tough time with our politics. In Latin American culture, there is a very characteristic sound we make when we go to the streets. It’s called cacerolazo, and it comes from ‘casserole’, which is in a pan. So you hit a pan with a spoon. When I was participating in these strikes, I was listening to what was happening and trying to listen to
how powerful the message through the sound was. There were thousands of people walking the streets, hitting pans with the spoons. I remember I started reflecting on how important and how powerful sound can be, and it’s just a pan! I remember that exact moment that I started realizing. I closed my eyes to listen, and started listening to sounds all around me in 360 degrees. I realized the world was not stereo. It took me 30 years to realize that we listen in 360 degrees and not in a stereo!
What did you do from there?
By that time, I had already spent 10 years producing in the music industry. I was feeling like the format of producing and distributing music had become a bit saturated, especially with the digital era. I was thinking, ‘How can we give our audiences and ourselves as creators experiences where we are all involved in the artistic experience? How can we convey the inspiration of the narrative, but through space – not just having
this unidirectional message which is commonly seen in music when the artist is on the stage, and then the audience is in front?’ Inspired by this thought, I started looking for new technologies to try to develop these kinds of concepts. That’s when I started studying audio from a new perspective. I made some studies on soundscape and acoustic ecology to go a little bit more deeply into how we classify sounds.
You’re the founder of Omni Soundlab, a production and research studio and venue that serves as a hub for exploring the possibilities of immersive audio. Why did you decide to create this space and what goes on there?
Omni Soundlab has three lines of development. We have Dolby Atmos production for the music industry where we are working directly with artists, independent and major labels and distributors. We love to produce music catalogs – back catalogs or new singles. We offer this service to
everyone who wants their music in this immersive format. Then the second line is we are not just a studio, but also a venue, or a sound gallery. The recording studio has [traditionally] been a very closed space, and I’ve been realizing that there are so many people that love music, but they would like to understand how music is made and to have access to the place that music is created. We decided to implement this concept and to present a new vision on what these creative spaces could be, so we have a space where we can host up to 40 people. We also have been hosting some events for clients like Universal Music, where we had the pleasure to be the home for the release of the latest Beatles song, Now And Then
“THE FIRST TIME I LISTENED TO GENELEC SPEAKERS, I FELL IN LOVE.”
How has Dolby Atmos taken off in Chile?
We are proudly the official partners for the Dolby Institute in Chile, so we are able to certify professionals in Dolby Atmos. This is our educational aspect of the studio. We can produce music, we can research and we can produce events, but now we can also teach and spread the word about this emerging technology. In the beginning, Atmos in Chile was a bit slower, then everyone started talking about Atmos. We still don’t have cars [with integrated Atmos] here. In Chile, people are very interested in developing this concept. Now, everyone is talking about Atmos.
What are your views on how Dolby Atmos could transform the live music experience?
It’s thoroughly our thing! One of the things we like to do is to bring these experiences live. I really think that this will open many opportunities for artists to create new concepts. Of course, we have massive stadiums and I’ve been getting feedback from artists and audiences about how much they love this more intimate experience. This technology gives us the opportunity to have a different experience. You have amazing venues coming out in different parts of the world, and it’s totally the thing we like to do. We have been producing many [immersive] things in different countries and there are many more venues and theaters adopting these concepts so they can implement this to their shows. I think we’re just starting and as the massive adoption keeps growing, this will become more like a requirement for artists that want to play in this kind of format.
The studio has a 7.1.4 Genelec The Ones set up. When did you first experience Genelecs?
not just because of the sound or the story they have. I had the pleasure to travel to Finland. They invited me to Iisalmi where they have their headquarters. It was really nice to see how things were made and to understand their technology from the inside. I realized how much love they put into the production. The guys over there are really forward-thinking – and not just to sell more speakers. It’s their philosophy that they really want to make things better. And you can hear that with their products; the Genelecs are just so good. The technology is for people like me and it’s so smart.
How have you been using the monitors?
We’ve been doing live installations with Genelec. Last year, we had an event at a cultural center where we brought this Genelec 8351B SAM studio monitor to this industrial abandoned space – very Berlin style. The space was huge – very high, lots of reverberation and resonance and stuff – which I love for live installations because you need to understand how to collaborate with this architecture; you can not fight against it, you will lose, probably! Genelec’s GLM calibration system is the best tool ever. You can just place a microphone in the sweet spot or in an area, so if you want to calibrate to create a sweet spot, but in a bigger space, in just a few minutes, you will have your whole system calibrated. You record this information directly to your speakers, and voila! That kind of thing, for us, is just magic. Back in the day, you would take a few hours to do something like this, and now with just a few clicks, you are ready to go. I was pretty impressed. It’s almost like you can touch or you can see the different layers of sound moving through space. I had the luck to compare some different immersive audio systems, but with Genelec, it’s like they have an emotional sound, and I really love that. The first time I listened to Genelec speakers, I fell in love. As I’ve been traveling all over, I didn’t have a studio in one place. I was always working and producing in different studios. When I opened Omni Soundlab, I didn’t have a doubt that I would like to have a Genelec system. Genelec is probably one of the best companies in the world, and
Words by colby r a
yesm
In this sixth LD Systems Live Sessions, powered by Headliner, Brazilian pop artist Bellsavvy performs original song Lucy live at Signal House Studios in Hertfordshire through an LD Systems MAUI G3 rig and MON 15 A G3 Stage Monitors.
How did you first get into music?
I was a model before, and my mother is a professional singer; she was always telling me I needed to sing. She tried so much during my childhood to put me in singing groups, but I wanted to be a model. So I was, and then at some point she really asked if I could give music a chance, and at that point I felt fulfilled enough to start exploring other things. I always loved music and was always connected to it, along with acting. I would put an Evanescence track on over and over again and pretend I was in the music video – that was when I was around 10 years old.
In school I was scouted by a group of people from a school talent contest. I was placed as a vocalist in a band and we came second place nationally. I was given a lot of opportunity to be myself and feel fulfilled with what I was doing. My modelling career didn’t give me that - I think that music is much more honest and beautiful and deep. I wanted to connect with people and through my voice I could do that.
Professionally, the first experience I had was on MTV Brazil as a singer in a TV show they used to have a couple of years ago. I used to sing chart songs live on the show. I’ve done some broadway musicals as well, and from there I started wanting to be a solo pop singer and songwriter. I wanted to come to London, so I left Brazil and went to Berlin first to create a production portfolio. Shortly after that I signed for a UK and Austria-based label. That’s when I changed my name to Bellsavvy and started being a professional artist.
“2023 WAS A BLESSED YEAR FOR LIVE PERFORMANCES AND DEVELOPING MYSELF AS AN ARTIST.”
That was in 2020 in the middle of the chaos of the pandemic.
What have you been up to more recently?
My plan at the beginning of 2023 was to consistently release songs. I really wanted to put things out, but I’ve been through a very interesting artistic development with myself, where I went from pop to latin pop, then to latin music, then back to latin pop and now I’m back in pop. I felt like I could better shape my art and understand where I was going to end up. Because I had this change of heart and it was so true to me, I decided to prepare an album, telling the stories behind a couple of things I’ve been through recently.
I’ve also been doing a lot of live music. I’ve been on tour and I’ve done a couple of pop and latin festivals. I completed my first European tour in the middle of summer - it was amazing and a blessed year for live performances and developing myself as an artist.
Tell us about your new track, Lucy.
I’m so in love with Lucy because Lucy is me in a song. Lucy has everything I needed to be able to transform and transcript the feelings I was having in a toxic and abusive relationship into a song, where I could actually put out all of that mess, pain and darkness I was living in this abusive relationship. When you are in a relationship like this, people look for therapy, people look for ways of helping themselves, and while I was always very resilient in my life in multiple ways, I had music, and I know that music is my therapy.
Lucy is one of the most important chapters of the album because it’s a song in which I actually kick the door in and say, ‘you tried to put me in that dark place which belongs to you, but I’m God’s little girl so never mind. We’re sending you to hell; get out of my life.’ The relationship was with a very narcissistic, gaslighting person
who almost convinced me I was worth nothing, and that I was the bad guy. The name of the song Lucy refers to Lucifer, because he used to say that I was the devil. Lucy is about this super strong energy of, I’m not the bad guy, I know who I am, I love myself, and I’m back on it.
What is it like being an independent artist in today’s industry?
It’s really tough. We can romanticise it and say it’s amazing because we have control over our own content etc., and I agree with that, but everything has a cost and needs investment. It’s lovely on one hand because you have more freedom and can try different things, but we need structure and more opportunities to be seen. The financial side of things is definitely one of the biggest struggles.
How did you find performing through the LD Systems MAUI rig?
I found performing through the LD Systems rig absolutely fabulous. It sounds so good, and just made me feel so in the moment. You get that 360 degree music feeling all around and it feels really professional. High quality, high tech, high everything – I loved it and it was an amazing session. I actually want to have one of these in my house! The system is honestly spot on, and I would definitely suggest it to anyone.
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Words by ALICEGUST
SCORING TRUE DETECTIVE:
NIGHT COUNTRY
BAFTA-nominated composer Vince Pope has made a name for himself providing contemporary scores for series including No Offence, Undercover, Misfits and Black Mirror. His most recent projects are no less high profile: he composed the score for ITV’s four-part drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office and the highly anticipated new series of True Detective, starring Jodie Foster. True Detective: Night Country is seen as a return to form for the show made popular in part due to the magnetic performances in season one from Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. Here, Pope explains how he approached Mr Bates vs The Post Office like a thriller, and how horror, spirituality and Native American throat singers combine to infuse True Detective: Night Country with a dark underbelly.
Pope is here today to talk about True Detective: Night Country, but there’s a Post Office shaped elephant in the room. At the time of interview, Mr Bates vs The Post Office is all anyone is talking about, depicting the appalling true story of the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, where hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters and postmistresses were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting due to a defective IT system.
“I was actually quite familiar with the story,” says Pope from what he calls his “little cubby hole” in his central London home. “When my agent said, ‘They’re making it into a drama’, my first thought was, ‘They should! Because it’s such an incredibly horrible, surprising, crazy story’. I was absolutely gobsmacked at it, as everybody has been. It’s horrendous what happened to the postmasters.”
“IT’S BRINGING THESE VOICES THAT HAVEN’T BEEN NECESSARILY HEARD IN MAINSTREAM TELEVISION TO THE FORE.”
Knowing that striking the right tone for this reenactment of this real life miscarriage of justice would be key, Pope carefully considered his approach: “Obviously, because of the very intense, emotional nature of the piece, there’s this very human side to it,” he says. “This is not a made up story – this actually happened to people. So I was trying to keep it grounded in that very emotional sense, but at the same time, having this urgency that you tend to have when you’re dealing with a thriller. It’s almost a thriller, obviously, not in the sense that people were killing each other,” he points out. “But it’s a thriller in the sense of how tremendously crazy the story was and what the Post Office was doing to these poor postmasters. The way people took hold of it and were very moved and upset by what was portrayed in the drama was a surprise to me in terms of the level of interest in generating. It was surprising and very satisfying, because that’s what good journalistic drama can do. It has even produced changes of attitude towards compensation now. I heard Fujitsu – who were the people who supply the computer systems – have now admitted culpability, which is something that they never had done
in the past. It’s a shame that a drama has to be made in order for that impact to happen, but it certainly is having an impact.”
Set in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, Night Country follows the investigation behind the disappearance of eight men from a research station and stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as detectives Liz Danvers and Evangeline Navarro. It was Pope’s first time scoring the series.
“They used the same composer for the first three series, and this was a change of direction for them,” he nods, admitting that he too struggled to get through the second season. “I don’t tend to go and look and see what it was like before. If anything, I stay away from things like that because they’re not asking for the same thing, or anything approaching it,” he explains. “Especially because the seasons are completely standalone in terms of storyline and cast. Season one is two men in the very hot, sweltering Deep South, whereas this is the polar opposite, literally. Women are the main protagonists and it’s in the perpetual Alaskan night in the snow, so it’s very far away in terms of aesthetic. It is ultimately a whodunit, or a whatdunit,” he teases.
Pope shares that it’s not that often he gets to work on a project with a director and showrunner whose creativity and aesthetic he immediately gravitates to and feels so in tune with. Initially he talked with director Issa López, who serves as showrunner, writer and director for S4, about the feel of the show to make sure they were on the same page.
“There are no spoilers here, but on the one hand, you have this horrible crime that is committed where all the workers are found dead, so you have this dark undercurrent. It’s all above the Arctic Circle during a period of time where the sun doesn’t rise. So it stays perpetual night for about three or four months of the year, depending on how far north you are,” he explains. “So it has that darkness, but at the same time, it’s set in a place where Native American people are living and thriving and there is this level of spirituality, which is the counterpoint to that. So in a sense, it was how to get these two things running in parallel in terms of the score and how you want to balance that.”
Pope also gave some thought as to what images of ice, cold and darkness conjured for him in terms of how the score should sound: “I had to think about how we portrayed that with the score,” he nods. “I’ve used voices quite a lot, which represent the spiritual elements. I used a woman called Tanya Tagaq, who’s very famous in Canada as a promoter of Native American music. She’s a throat singer, so I use that as an element in the score to underpin that and to emphasise that spiritual nature of what we’re dealing with.”
Pope hopes his choice to incorporate choirs with Native American throat singers into his compositions adds authenticity to the show, being that it’s set in Alaska. “I was very keen to add voices from this part of the world, literally and figuratively. I think it does add authenticity. I mean, I’m always
slightly circumspect about saying, ‘Add authenticity’, it sounds a bit tacked on,” he remarks. “But actually, it was certainly more than that. It’s definitely bringing these voices that haven’t been necessarily heard in mainstream television to the fore. Hopefully, it feels integral.”
Pope’s musical contributions to Night Country involve crafting a score that mirrors the dark and mysterious atmosphere of the narrative. He explains his deliberate effort to infuse the score with a dark underbelly in order to provide the series with a sinister horror element: “There are a lot of horror cliches, so I wanted to try and steer away from those,” he notes. “I found this amazing instrument called a Fujara, which is a wind instrument. I was thinking, ‘When you’ve got all these very wild, nighttime snowy scenes, what, in my
mind’s eye, do I hear?’ I was thinking: wind instruments, and I started researching. I found this amazing instrument, which is about twice the size of a bassoon – it’s a massive thing. It’s about six feet in length, and it makes this incredible sound. I used that as an underpinning for the dark, brooding landscape and the mysterious side of the aesthetic and the score. Atmosphere is a way you can have fun as a composer: trying to create something slightly different and slightly more interesting with sounds that you haven’t heard before. That’s definitely where the experimentation comes into play.”
True Detective: Night Country is streaming now.
‘IT’S GOING TO BE AN EXCITING YEAR’
Tipped for big things in 2024, UK artist Cam Holmes is looking to follow up his first two singles Roses and Aftertaste with a raft of new releases and some live shows to boot. Headliner caught up with him to discuss his route from reality TV stardom to finding his voice as an artist, and how SoundOn is helping take his career to the next level.
Many will be familiar with you from your star appearance in Netflix’s reality TV show Too Hot To Handle, but your passion has always been music. When did the music bug first bite?
Music has always been the dream since I was about eight years old. It was one of those things I always wanted to do, but like it is for a lot of people, it felt like a pipe dream, so I just buried it. I then went to uni, studied criminology, got a degree, and just assumed music wasn’t going to be a thing for me. But luckily, I got cast for this reality show and I knew it was going to be a big show and I thought it could be my opportunity to open up a lot of doors and give myself the kind of backing I need so I could pursue music without some of the stress that a lot of artists go through. So when that show came off it was almost like my dream being realized. Music has always been present in my life, but whether or not I could pursue it was a bit up and down, so I have to thank the show for giving me that platform from which to push my music.
Did you have a musical upbringing?
No one in my family was involved in music or anything like that, but my parents loved music. It was a musical household, so it was always something I grew up with. I dabbled in a lot of music when I was younger. I played a few instruments; I would sing and perform in the school talent show and things like that. But it was mainly lyrics and writing that I loved. That was my way of breaking through the barrier I had in my head. For me it was like therapy and that was why I wanted to do it.
From a young age I realized the importance music can have emotionally. It can tie you to things and memories and people, even people you’ve lost. There is music you associate with those things and from a young age I realized that. And I thought if I could do that, if I could make music that would have a sway on people’s lives, that would be a beautiful thing. That’s where my passion started.
What were some of your musical influences around that time?
At the point I started writing it was very indie-led. Ben Howard was one of the first artists I saw live and I was fascinated by his songwriting. And then I dabbled a lot in the indie route and that is where I want to push my music now. When I was growing up I would take a lot of influence from what my parents were listening to. My dad would listen to a lot of David Bowie, Simply Red, and my mum would listen to Janet Jackson. I love a lot of ‘70s and ‘80s music. But it was indie stuff that really got me into writing.
“SOUNDON OFFERS MORE CONTROL AND THERE IS MORE TRUST IN THE WORKING RELATIONSHIP.”
After your Too Hot To Handle appearance did you find that doors started to open for you in the way that you hoped?
It did open doors, but not to people who were necessarily interested from an artist perspective. They saw me as someone with a few million followers, good engagement, but they didn’t want to hear what I had to say. It was like: this is your lane, and this is the music you are going to make. But over the years I have met people who listen to me and want me to go in my own direction. When you are new to the music industry you feel like you haven’t got a say. So, yes, it did open doors, but not in a way that would have legitimized me as an actual artist. These people would say, ‘you’re doing R&B, you’re doing pop’, and I’d say OK, but then I’d get home and realize this wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. Luckily, I’m now in a really good space with my music and I’m really excited about what’s coming up as it’s absolutely the music I want to be making.
You’ve been releasing music via SoundOn – TikTok’s music distribution platform. Why has it been such a good fit for you?
I would say that the main benefit is that nowadays social media is your main platform for getting your music out there. You are essentially your own marketing. I know a lot of artists that get very overwhelmed, but I was very lucky as I was already in the social media field because of the show. But for some it’s a whole new world. With SoundOn, we sat down and looked at different trends, discussed different ideas and different ways to promote the music, and just having people that have that insight into the platform is absolutely amazing.
Does the platform offer you greater control and freedom over your releases than other distribution models?
I haven’t had that experience with a label yet, but I definitely know from other artists that it offers a lot more control and there is a lot more trust
in the working relationship you have with them when compared with more traditional routes.
What’s the current situation with regards to new releases and live shows?
I’m just working on finishing my third single which is my favorite song I’ve made. It’s really personal and means a lot to me so I can’t wait to get that out there. I plan to be releasing a lot more music this year and we are currently looking at some intimate live shows, and then it’s a case of playing it by ear. There’s lots in the pipeline. It’s going to be an exciting year.
Italian hip-hop duo Coez & Frah Quintale recently took the stage at Florence’s Nelson Mandela Forum for a show-stopping immersive live performance that combined L-Acoustics’ L-ISA spatial audio technology and its recently launched L Series speaker for the very first time.
In support of Coez & Frah Quintale’s Lovebars tour, the Florence show saw audiences immersed in the pair’s music via a specially designed 5.1 immersive L-ISA audio system, which also features, for the first time, L-Acoustics’s L Series speaker technology.
Compact, lightweight, and using up to 60% less material (wood, paint, steel) to build, the L Series is designed to occupy 30% less space than other
products capable of the same output, minimizing trucks and lightening the carbon footprint of the tour.
According to Tom Laveuf, who worked on the sound design and audio component of the show, the coming together of L-ISA and L Series made for a perfect fit.
“In many ways, L Series was developed with L-ISA in mind, and this duo performed exceptionally well on their first tour together,” Laveuf tells Headliner. “Coez and Frah Quintale are hip-hop artists with a very reactive audience, and the most important aspects of the genre are the vocals, and the beat. It was obvious to me that the whole of the audience was unified in the experience. The energy was spread throughout the whole crowd. It wasn’t just the center of the floor, or the area closest to the stage. You could tell that every fan was hearing, and therefore feeling, the same things.
“L Series was designed for rapid deployment and lower margins for error, as well as with unobtrusive physical design and integration into the set,” he continues. “It brings homogeneous clarity and fosters shared experiences throughout the audience. L Series is a vast general advancement in the quality of concert sound reinforcement, and these features also make it more feasible for our industry to adopt L-ISA technology’s live immersive format… which is the way of the future.”
For Coez & Frah Quintale, the opportunity to incorporate
immersive elements into their live show enabled them to create an intimate environment in what was a significant step up for the pair in terms of venue size.
“I was a little afraid of the size of the arena, because other shows I’ve seen in my life, they could be a little cold,” Frah explains. “In my opinion, with this system, even at the level of sound involvement, it allowed the vibes and the atmosphere that you can create in smaller dimensions, which I was used to, to be brought to a bigger level.
“And aside from putting a bit of a flag on a new technology and being able to say that we did it first, we know now that our investment, rather than being on fireworks on the stage, will be more about the quality of the sound and the music.”
The added sense of intimacy brought to the tour by the L-ISA technology is something that Laveuf too was keenly aware of.
“Using a 5.1 configuration, the technical crew was able to spatialize the mix and immerse the whole of the audience in the same experience, which in turn helped the artist feel closer and more connected with
each individual,” he states. “This is why we created L-ISA, to reconnect what is lost when fans are separated from the artists they so admire by thousands of other fans, barricades and barriers, a stage that is over two meters high by 30 meters wide, and all the tech in the middle.”
Laveuf also notes that the level of engagement between the performers and the sound system did not go unnoticed by the team of audio technicians and engineers.
“Coez & Frah were so engaged in the choice of an L-ISA immersive experience that they took time out of their show to explain the technology to their fans every single night,” he says. “They themselves felt the difference, and wanted their audience to understand it. I believe they also feel that it is the way of the future, and that this is simply a better way to experience live music.”
As for the future of immersive live shows, Laveuf says he feels immense pride not only in what has been achieved on the tour, but also in bringing the power of immersive audio technology to a new audience.
“I’m really proud of what we accomplished,” he concludes. “With our partner Agora, we were able to introduce this technology to a new fanbase in a new genre in Italy. L-ISA has proven to be a very effective way to reinforce classical music, which is something that has been done for a long time in Italy (Ennio Morricone, Orchestra del Maggio Fiorentino in Sienna, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, and more). But with this tour, we have introduced it into a new genre, on a touring level, and this I hope will excite other creatives, engineers and managers to take a step into this new direction of audience/artist experience.”
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DEF LEPPARD | LEAD SINGER | 8424 CONSOLE
Our Engineer Ronan and I wanted a Neve, and we identified the 8424 - which is a magic desk. I have one in my studio here, and Ronan has one in his studio - it works really well.
Headliner discovers how Riedel’s innovative Bolero ADR (Advanced DECT Receiver) wireless intercom system was deployed at the biggest sporting event of the year.
In a thrilling Super Bowl matchup that goes down as one of the most exciting in recent history, the Kansas City Chiefs secured a narrow victory over the San Francisco 49ers, 25-22, marking only the second overtime game in Super Bowl history. But while the spotlight shone brightly on the game, commercials, Taylor Swift, and the jaw-dropping halftime performances featuring Usher and friends, the unsung hero was the communication backbone working tirelessly behind the scenes. Ensuring a seamless production, the intricate coordination played a vital role in the success of the February 11 show at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
A total of 62 Riedel Bolero antennas and 153 belt packs were supplied for this year’s event via Riedel partners, ATK Versacom, a Clair Global brand, SAV Entertainment, LLC and Van Wagner Group. The NFL used their in-house Riedel system and ESPN even had a small deployment for their pre and post shows. Since its introduction in 2017, Bolero has been deployed in hundreds of productions, often enabling development of new workflows and use cases.
The Bolero system supports up to 250 beltpacks and 100 antennas in a single deployment. A battery life of 17+ hours and optional stand-alone operation, which doesn’t require a base station, makes Bolero convenient to use. With features such as ADR with multidiversity and antireflection technology for greater RF robustness, “Touch&Go” beltpack registration, and versatile
“IN THE STATES, THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME THAT WE ACTUALLY DEPLOYED THIS SPECIFIC TYPE OF TECHNOLOGY.”
operation — as a wireless beltpack, wireless keypanel, and walkietalkie — plus, Bluetooth support and a bottle opener, Bolero has arguably redefined the wireless intercom category.
All IP-based comms at this year’s Super Bowl were on the AES67 spectrum; SMPTE ST 2110-30, as Tommy Bridwell, senior project engineer at Riedel, explains:
“ATK deployed around 64 beltpacks to personnel all over the field,” he says. “We then had antennas in specific locations, depending on where the density of beltpacks might be on the field. Each antenna accommodates 10 beltpacks total, so we had to calculate and group the antennas closer in proximity to one another in order to cater to areas of high-density foot traffic.”
ST 2110-30 has become a standard IP protocol for many AV manufacturers and integrators. Serving as a way for different devices to speak the same language, its precision time protocol (PTP) synching allows for very precise timing across all different types of hardware, offering crystal clear digital audio at very low latency: “Not only does it talk audio, but it also talks video and ancillary data,” adds Bridwell. “So it’s across
all different types of mediums that we use within live production.
“In the States, this was the first time that we actually deployed this specific type of technology with regards to opening up new frequency bands for the beltpacks to connect to,” he continues. “Normally in the US, we have them operating on a 1.92 to 1.93 GHz frequency range. For this job specifically, we were able to lobby with the FCC to actually open up a
few more frequencies on the lower register of the DECT plan.”
Matt Campisi, senior project manager at ATK Versacom – one of Riedel’s partners that was primarily responsible for the halftime show –returned to work on the event for a staggering 24th time, and often sees new challenges thrown up every year.
“We’re all in one location which we call the rack room,” he tells Headliner.
“THE SYSTEM WAS VERY ADVANTAGEOUS FOR US AND WORKED SEAMLESSLY THROUGHOUT ALL THAT SPACE.”
“That’s where we take all the audio feeds and distribute them back out from there. It was a very big deployment and a lot of endpoints this time around, with distribution panels spread out at key locations within the stadium.
“The Super Bowl is one of the most challenging events with all the other wireless devices out there, so we spent a lot of time with Riedel analyzing the air and figuring out what DECT frequency we can use if we could get the STAs approved from the FCC, which we did.”
The ability to use five different frequency splits for the Bolero system in order to share space with NFL officials made a huge difference, according to Campisi:
“Riedel, ourselves and the Van Wagner Group tried to coordinate our attack in terms of how we
spaced everything out to make it all cohesively work,” he explains. “We also share the same clocking for the PTP on the Bolero, which helped us manage our time slots together.
“We used a lot of Riedel smart panels and Artist intercom frames at certain control positions, which worked really well. From the AES stream for the panels, we used Netgear switches to pass all of our data. The robustness of the system, in terms of being able to change channels on the fly quickly and put antennas in tunnels and on the field, was very advantageous for us and worked seamlessly throughout all that space.”
As well as the comprehensive Bolero wireless system, Riedel also deployed 12 Artist intercom nodes, 120 key panels, 20 NSAs, 53 C3 belt packs, 16 C44 System Interfaces and a multitude of other accessories,
clocking up over 800 total ports and over 2.5 miles of fiber optics. This was the first time this type of RF deployment had been undertaken for a US sports event.
“The halftime show went off without a hitch,” Campisi sums up. “Looking ahead to next year and beyond, we’re excited about the Bolero and Artist intercom combo, along with the extra DECT space for those packed events. It sets us up nicely to nail communication in all the future happenings. Good communication is a must, especially during the high profile and complex events. Knowing we’ve been successful so far gives us a great feeling; we can leave knowing we came through with a crucial service for them.”
RIEDEL.NET
After a brilliantly blossoming career that has seen her scoring films and solo releases of her stunning modern classical music, Emilie LevienaiseFarrouch has achieved a massive high point with her original music for All Of Us Strangers, starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal. She chats to Headliner about her career so far and working on the BAFTA and Golden Globe-nominated film.
Before her film career fully blossomed, Levienaise-Farrouch sent a demo to Brighton’s Fat Cat records. Before long she was signed to their 130701 post-classical imprint, which is steeped in history as it was once home to the likes of Max Richter, Hauschka and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson. Her most recent release with the label is her stunning album Ravage, which dropped in 2022.
On the other side of her career, Levienaise-Farrouch is rapidly establishing herself as one of the film industry’s go-to composers following her work on the critically acclaimed Rocks in 2020 and the Bill Nighystarring Living in 2022, as well as several other films. She’s no stranger to the stage either, having performed
at the Barbican, Union Chapel, as well as having new music premiere at the BBC Proms.
Now an Ivor Novello and BIFAnominated composer, LevienaiseFarrouch wasn’t always set on a music career. A combination of playing her grandmother’s piano, learning the instrument and classical music theory, plus a fascination with the production she heard in the music of Radiohead formed a big passion for music. But, being a millennial, she explains that, “If you wanted to learn about careers, you couldn’t just look it up, I’d have to go to a careers advisor. And if I said I wanted to do music, they wouldn’t exactly be helpful!”
But, after moving from her native Bordeaux to London to study music, and spending lots of time amidst the city’s clubs and concerts, music increasingly became an inevitability for her.
“I scored a few short films while at university with friends,” she says. “But I did worry about how the films you work on become your CV, and when you start out you need to take the films that come your way. So it felt really important that I go out and write my own music and experiment first.”
Her commitment to honing her sound and craft so that filmmakers would seek her out based on her music, rather than the types of films she has scored, paid off immensely when she got the call for All Of Us Strangers. Thanks to a compelling, reality-bending story and brilliant performances from Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, the film has garnered multiple BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations.
Levienaise-Farrouch explains how, in a film like All Of Us Strangers, the performances from the actors play a huge role in shaping the music she composed for the film.
“I like to mirror the intensity of the acting,” she says. “With All Of Us Strangers, because it’s such a delicate and subtle film, I didn’t want to have a score that would be bombastic and huge and imposing. Andrew Scott’s emotional states in the film are so fragile; I was so affected by how detailed his performance is. It’s so subtle, but there are some very small hints of a shift in him at some moments when the camera lingers on him.”
Indeed, with Scott’s character being a reclusive screenwriter who begins visiting his childhood home and encountering his parents, looking just as they did before they suddenly died 30 years earlier, a bombastic orchestral score was not going to fit the bill.
“I still wanted to have some acoustic instruments,” Levienaise-Farrouch says. “There’s cello, violin and piano. I performed the synths on the score while watching the film to have this human touch. And if you bring live instruments and musicians, it adds so much variation and emotion to the score. But we wanted to manipulate the acoustic parts enough so that they were like a dream or a memory.”
And for any synth-heads keen to know which instruments found their way onto the score, LevienaiseFarrouch reveals: “I have the Sequential Take 5, which is a lovely little synth, and the Moog Sub 25. And it might seem funny to say because it’s such a cheap little synthesizer, but I used a lot of the MicroKorg on this film! It’s a pretty common synth, but I love the patches I’ve developed on it over the years and you can create some beautiful sounds on it.”
As is the nature of the film industry, Levienaise-Farrouch isn’t at liberty to divulge what her next projects are, only allowing the tidbit: “It’s a very vocal and choral-heavy score — you’ll know it when you hear it!”
But let’s not concern ourselves too much with that, the pressing matter is to go see the beautiful All Of Us Strangers and listen to the phenomenal score on repeat.
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In this Emerging Headliner interview powered by JBL, Headliner gets to know Venus, an up and coming artist with a talent for writing soothing, infectious music and relatable narratives. In fact, this California-based songstress’ music is so ethereal and hypnotic, it even sounds pleasant when she’s telling you to eff off.
“It’s a juxtaposition,” she smiles, acknowledging her song Eff Off. “It’s got a sweet sound, but the lyrics are like, ‘What’s going on here?’
I’ve always been into very ethereal sounds because people like music that people can attach to.” Venus admits to feeling a touch of nerves due to this being one of her first interviews. She needn’t worry – she’s a natural, and is warm and generous with her time and anecdotes.
So who is Venus, in a nutshell? It turns out this independent artist does it all – Venus is a singer, songwriter, instrumentalist and producer who combines these strengths into an
undeniable dreamlike fusion of indie/ alternative, pop and new wave.
“I was always into producing instrumentals and I’ve always been in love with musical scores and compositions,” she shares from her home in California. “I guess that has to do with my band background. With all of the instruments that come into orchestral music, there always is a slight ethereal sound, so I try to incorporate a modern way of having an ethereal aspect into the music. My voice is also soft, so it just goes really well with softer sounding music.”
For Venus, music is the soundtrack to the stories of our lives. With that in mind, it comes as no surprise that her music is always inspired by true events:
“I am the type of artist who has to experience something or go through something in order to write,” she confirms – “and that doesn’t have to be negative. I remember I went to a James Blake concert and he said that he’s trying to get himself to not always write when he’s sad. It’s a lot easier to get in touch with the negative side of things for some reason,” she reasons.
“Music helps artists deal with those negative emotions, so that’s usually why it’s easier to write from that place. I also used to only write from sad experiences or negative experiences, so I’ve found a way to get myself into the headspace of writing music with all of my life experiences that I go through. I think it’s allowed me to dive more into the wide range of music and songwriting.”
Recent track, Things Change, is characterized by Venus’ signature velvet vocals, hypnotic guitar riffs and dreamy synthesizers. In her own words it’s “a hazy and misty lullaby for pondering the inevitability of change.
In the literal sense, it was about things changing very frequently, but at the time when I wrote the song, there were so many things going on in my life,” she explains. “I had broken off a relationship – both platonically and romantically – I had changed jobs, I had moved where I was living, and everything was moving at such a quick pace that it was hard to grasp that. It’s like a metamorphosis right now; everything around you is moving, it’s changing, and you have to go with the flow and move with it. I had produced the instrumental first and at the time, I really wanted to write to it, but I hadn’t fully reflected on all of the changes that had gone on in my life. But over time, I was able to come to terms with the uncomfortability that I felt with all those changes, and was able to really understand it and feel grateful for it. The beautiful part of life is that things are always going to be changing, and it’s the journeys of change where we find our stories to tell.”
Venus hopes that people feel seen when they listen to the track: “I hope that people feel like, ‘I have gone through a lot of things in life, but it’s okay that life is moving and it’s okay to feel uncomfortable’. It’s okay to feel strange, but I have to keep moving forward and accept that. Life is going
to take me where I need to go. I have to be okay with the fact that things are gonna change.”
New single, If (This is Love) is a reflective and emotive ballad – a soft declaration of love and a hope that it will last. As with all Venus’ songs, she wrote and produced the song herself.
“I had first written it in my room on my ukulele actually – I thought it was just going to be a small little ukulele song,” she reveals. “Then my partner played the chords for me on guitar, and I thought, ‘This is super beautiful’, so that’s how the music happened. The lyrics came from a place of genuine love. It was a declaration of love for the person that I was experiencing – and am experiencing – this kind of love with. It’s not a song that is supposed to be skeptical, but a feeling of, ‘This is something that I’ve never felt before. I love the way it feels, I love the way this type of love is genuine; it’s pure. It’s almost a spiritual love, and if this is what it really is, then I want to keep this; I want to stay here. I want to make sure that this love that I have is always protected and it’s safe’.”
“THE EP IS GOING TO SURROUND THE IDEA OF GROWING UP, GROWING PAINS AND FALLING IN AND OUT OF LOVE.”
Drawing inspiration from her vastly diverse music tastes, Venus writes, records and produces all of her music within the walls of her home – first getting a taste for music production in high school when she discovered FL Studio and Logic.
“I was super intrigued by it and I wanted to know how to do it, and that’s where I started producing. I know some people usually start with GarageBand, but I was like, ‘Nope, we’re doing Logic!’ I realized that if I want to keep singing and doing music, I should learn how to do it myself so that I don’t have to wait for anyone to do it for me. What really tipped me over the edge was the same breakup that inspired Eff Off – that was my first ever fully self-produced and written song,” she points out.
Having a home studio set up means Venus is particular about the necessary equipment she invests in to shape her sound. She shares that she uses AKG K371BT professional studio headphones, which strike the perfect balance between studio-quality sound, Bluetooth functionality, plush comfort and a sleek and a sturdy design.
“They’ve been absolutely amazing,” she enthuses, smiling. “I’ve been using them wired, although they’re also Bluetooth. The sound quality is absolutely amazing, the headphones are very comfortable and the quality of the build is fantastic. I absolutely love these! I have used them to do some test vocals to figure out melodies and things like that, and the sound quality is perfect. It’s amazing.”
K371-BTs are precision-engineered to match AKG’s Reference Response acoustic target to reproduce natural, balanced audio in extraordinary detail, which allows Venus to make more confident decisions when she’s mixing and editing.
“It’s so important because if your headphones sound good and what you’re hearing back sounds good, then
it will inspire you to keep going and to keep creating,” she nods. “Sonically, things sound really good on these. You can immediately hear the sound quality difference [when compared to the previous brand of headphones she was using]. When I play back vocals, you can hear it in the instruments – you can hear those little, minute things that you have to hear when you’re making music that you won’t be able to hear on a pair of headphones that are not as good. You should get a good pair of headphones because the way you hear things is going to be the way that your music turns out. The better your equipment is, the better your song is going to come out,” she confirms.
Venus shares that there is an EP project in the works, which, naturally, is being composed entirely by herself.
“People can expect a really well thought out – not conceptual – but a really well thought out piece of music,” she says of the upcoming EP. “The instruments that have been used, the lyrics, the production –everything is going to be very sonically pleasing and hopefully very relatable. Things Change is going to be on that EP and the EP is going to surround the idea of growing up, growing pains and falling in and out of love. I truly hope that people feel seen and feel heard when they listen to it,” she smiles knowingly.
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INSTA: @SOLUSVENUS
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Songwriter, producer and engineer Farzad “Farzi” Rahnavard has elevated the audio conversion in his own studio by investing in a Prism Sound Dream ADA-128 modular conversion system, as Headliner recently discovered…
Based in Hamburg, Germany, Farzi is the founder of Duo Mastering, which offers mixing, mastering and audio engineering coaching led by industry professionals Tayib Thomas and Thomas Petermann, who have already made a name for themselves in the pro audio business. He began his own career as a songwriter for major record labels and had an international hit with Blasterjaxx. As a mixing and mastering engineer, he has worked with artists such as Cro, Shindy, Mike Singer and Shirin David.
“The Dream ADA-128 provides an exceptional phantom center and stereo image, making it easy for me to EQ and use compression during mastering,” says Farzi. “All my
decisions are made much quicker, significantly improving my workflow.
“I have been using Prism Sound conversion for some time – I also own a Prism Sound Lyra audio interface that I now plan to use when I’m traveling because it is small enough to be easily portable and because the preamps alone are enough to make it worth keeping,” he explains.
“I am now using my Dream ADA-128 in conjunction with a Maselec MTC1X mastering transfer console, which is the centerpiece of my studio. I also have Barefoot MM26 main monitors, Terry Audio EQ, a Manley Vari Mu, and a selection of outboard equipment from manufacturers such as Vertigo Sound, Knif Audio and Maselec.”
Designed to suit the needs of a wide range of audio professionals, Prism Sound’s Dream ADA-128 is a modular audio conversion system offering up to 128 channels of 32-bit A/D and D/A conversion. It is both a conversion system and a high-performance, networkable audio distribution and processing system, with a flexible 2RU mainframe that can be fitted with up to 16 analog and digital IO modules (each of which nominally provides eight input or output ports, or both). Up to four host modules provide bidirectional multi-channel connections to host computers, workstations, networks etc, with the ADA-128 providing free routing between all of these inputs and outputs under detailed user control, as well as a wide range of processing functions.
Since upgrading his studio, Farzi has completed a number of projects and is currently working with Sacha Hanlet, a singer, songwriter and record producer based in Luxembourg.
“I have used my new ADA-128 across several different music genres, and I love it,” he explains. “It performs flawlessly. The sound quality is why I bought the ADA-128 in the first place. I highly recommend trying it out but have money in your bank account because once you’ve tried it, you’ll want to keep it!”
Farzi’s Dream ADA-128 was supplied by Prism Sound’s recently appointed German distributor ES Pro Audio, with whom Farzi has had a long and successful relationship.
“Erwin Strich, who owns the company, is an amazing human being,” Farzi says. “Everything that I have bought for my studio, I have bought from him. I trust him 1000%, so when he said the ADA-128 would solve all my conversion problems, I had no hesitation in giving it a try. And he was absolutely right. It’s one of the best investments I’ve made.” Farzi adds that the customer support he received from ES Pro Audio and Prism Sound was second to none.
“Prism Sound staff were so helpful in setting up my Lyra-2 with my Trinnov ST-2 Pro – they even provided a setup file so that I just had to load it up,” he concludes. “Once I got the Dream ADA-128, it was very easy to install. I use it as my main analog capture device and as the DAC for my monitors. I can’t wait to try out the unit’s new preamp card and I’m also looking forward to using the Thunderbolt host card when that becomes available.”
“CODA’S SYSTEM OPTIMISER PLAYED A CENTRAL ROLE IN THE SYSTEM CONFIGURATION.”
Germany’s biggest New Year’s Eve party - ‘Willkommen 2024’ took place in front of the iconic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and was broadcast live for several hours by ZDF Television. Production specialist AMBION deployed almost 300 loudspeakers from across the CODA Audio range for the extravaganza, as Headliner recently discovered…
The event – which featured spectacular live performances from leading German artists and attracted an estimated 3.5 million TV viewers –was hosted by well-known presenters Andrea Kiewel and Johannes B. Kerner, with around 65,000 spectators present at the show. Such a prestigious occasion demanded exceptional audio, and AMBION GmbH was engaged to deliver on-site sound production as well as set construction for the main stage.
AMBION supplied CODA Audio systems to meet what was a challenging brief. Whilst the sound systems were required to cover a very large area, they also had to take account of the sight-lines of many TV cameras and be as discreet as possible. Florian Vollmer, senior specialist planning and head of sound technology at AMBION describes the scale of the task:
“It’s true that the specifications were quite demanding!” he says. “We had to cover the entire area from the Brandenburg Gate to the Victory Column, all with a limit of 84db. In total, this was a distance of almost 2.5km, which required uninterrupted sound at the desired level.”
Vollmer began planning for the show three weeks before construction began, creating a Vectorworks plan to be used to generate a detailed CODA
Audio System Optimiser file, before checking the various band riders and liaising with other contractors to see what infrastructure could be shared:
“CODA’s System Optimiser played a central role in the system configuration,” he adds. “We used it to calculate an extremely realistic result in advance so we could clearly see what was needed at which position.”
Based on his calculations, the ‘Willkommen 2024’ setup deployed almost 300 loudspeakers from across the CODA Audio range. The main L/R comprised 14 AiRAY and three SC2-F subs per side with a center L/R of eight N-RAY per hang. Two hangs of 12 N-RAY provided the out-fill, with nine APS for near-field. A sub-arc of 36 SCP-F completed the main PA.
A further inventory of AiRAY, ViRAY and N-RAY was used for delays, ensuring that every member of the audience across the large site experienced consistent audio throughout the performances. A total of 46 CODA Audio LINUS14D and 24 LINUS10 DSP amplifiers were used to drive the systems.
As is customary with televised shows of this kind, the visual requirements were demanding.
“It was important that loudspeakers were ‘invisible’, but that everyone could hear everything perfectly everywhere!” Vollmer reflects. “We were able to rely on the supercompact dimensions of the CODA units to achieve our aims, particularly center-stage where we opted for a left/ right slope instead of a cluster hanging in the middle of the
set. We kept the near-field to a minimum and concealed the subs underneath the stage deck.”
AMBION’s efforts were rewarded with an extremely positive response from every stakeholder. The unrivaled event was a great success both on the ground and on TV, kicking off 2024 in great style.
CODAAUDIO.COM
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Celestion is celebrating its centennial anniversary with the release of the Celestion 100 Impulse Response Collection. Headliner finds out how these meticulous and accurate digital downloads bring the tone of the Celestion 100 guitar loudspeaker to DAWs and modeling amplifiers…
The latest from Celestion is the Celestion 100 Impulse Response Collection, a downloadable library of impulse responses designed to meticulously capture the tone of the Celestion 100 loudspeaker — recently introduced in 2024 commemoration of the company’s 100th anniversary — for any digital music production platform.
Whether in a DAW for recording or a modeling amplifier for performance, these impulse responses (IRs) place one of the most iconic and historically significant Celestion sounds within arm’s reach of any musician, recordist or producer.
“THESE BENEFITS CREATE A PLAYING EXPERIENCE THAT IS AS CREDIBLY VINTAGE AS ANY SPEAKER CAN ACHIEVE.”
The Celestion 100 speaker traces its roots to the original G12, a generalpurpose 12-inch radio speaker that was later fortified to meet the rapidly evolving demands of electric guitar amplification in the ‘50s and ’60s. This iteration became the T530 or Alnico Blue, which worked so well that it was installed in the Vox combo amps (a favorite of The Beatles) that powered the ‘British Invasion’ of the early 1960s.
Today’s hardware Celestion 100 delivers the tone of those early Alnico speakers and its many descendants and variants, but with more durable materials, state-of-the-art manufacturing processes and precise tolerances — akin to a collectible automobile that has been not merely restored, but tastefully modernized.
The Celestion 100 Impulse Responses digitize these sonic characteristics via a meticulous recording process, beginning with studio-quality, go-to guitar cabinet microphones such as the Royer R-121 ribbon, Shure SM57 and Sennheiser MD421.
Each IR thus offers a variety of mic type and placement options and can be loaded into any IR host within a DAW or into stand-alone amp modeling hardware. The result is an authentic speaker emulation that sounds every bit as outstanding as its hardware counterpart.
With the Celestion 100 IRs, musicians can expect a blooming low end and bell-like treble
coupled with a sweet, shimmering midrange. When overdriven, the IRs compress gradually and musically, softening the notes’ attack in the exact same fashion as classic Celestion alnico loudspeakers.
The complete Celestion 100 IR Collection includes five cabinet configurations: 1 x 12 open-back, 1 x 12 closed-back, 2 x 12 open-back, 2 x 12 closed-back and 4 x 12 closed-back.
These reflect the most widely used setups for studio recording and onstage use across single, dual and four-speaker cabinet sizes. Each of these can also be purchased and downloaded as a single impulse response, though the full collection represents a significant cost savings compared to buying IRs individually.
Paired with a DAW and IR loader plugin, modeling amp hardware or amp-top load box, the Celestion 100 Impulse Response Collection provides authentic tone alongside lively and dynamic response, all without introducing latency.
These benefits create a playing experience that is as credibly vintage as any speaker can achieve, but with real-world performance that is predictable and reliable in today’s most demanding recording and performance applications.
The Celestion 100 Impulse Responses join an extensive family of acclaimed Celestion IRs, including the Shades of Greenback Collection, G12-
50GL Lynchback, Neo Creamback, Copperback, Hempback, Vintage 30 and many more.
The Celestion 100 Impulse Responses are available for download as individual IRs and as a complete collection at celestionplus.com.
The introduction of authentic Celestion Impulse Responses represented the company’s forward step in making its celebrated speaker tones available as digital downloads. Celestion IRs capture the essential behavior of a speaker in a particular cabinet in the specific space in which it was recorded, including the frequency and phase response of single drivers as well as the interaction of multiple speakers.
They offer significant benefits in both recording and live production, enabling the desired tone to be precisely and consistently reproduced regardless of the recording or live sound environment.
Celestion’s own SpeakerMix Pro sees the company delivering a truly forward-thinking studio software solution that enables users to get every ounce of tone from Impulse Response technology. The companion Dynamic Speaker Responses (DSRs) for the plugin exemplify the next generation in speaker response emulation, representing a true advancement in the technology of digital speaker tone.
Mike
Schoen,Senior Director, Audio Sales, Harman Professional, North America explains why Harman is not afraid of change, how the manufacturer came out of the pandemic stronger than ever before, what it learned from the pandemic, and where Harman keeps its three Grammys…
You’ve seen the audio industry from several different perspectives and have experienced numerous different business objectives through your career. What’s the one thing you would say has been consistent among all the changes you’ve seen over the years in the industry?
Two things I’ve noticed in my career have been constant and have not changed: One is the need to embrace change, and the other is the need to know how to solve problems. Harman is not afraid of change – we actually embrace it and use it to grow our business. People change roles at Harman in organizational structure changes, and on the product side, we’re always changing and innovating with new products. Change is usually in response to market trends, or competitive landscape, or how to
better serve the customer with regard to solving problems, which is another constant that I’ve noticed which is a necessity in my career, regardless of the technology shifts that have occurred and regardless of what the competitive landscape looks like. Despite catastrophic external events such as the covid pandemic, what I’ve noticed is if you’re good at solving problems, you’ll probably survive, and if you’re great at solving problems, you’re gonna win. It also relates to how you work with customers. The need to build a sales approach is built around solving problems, which we also call ‘solution selling’. It’s been my experience that people that sell solutions – versus products – and focus on solving the customer’s pain points, tend to be the most successful.
“REFRESHING THE ENTIRE PORTABLE PA LINE HELPED US PROTECT OUR NUMBER ONE MARKET SHARE AND MADE US STRONGER COMING OUT OF THE PANDEMIC THAN WE WERE GOING IN.”
How is Harman’s strategy to increase demos in the field driven by the Performance Audio Roadshow featuring the A-series and the SRX900, and the Install Roadshow featuring Control Contractor products in the Sprinter van?
We’ve accelerated the number of product demos that we do for our customers. We’ve taken out a large truck over the last two years and hit 15 or so cities every year with a demo event of our high performance line array loudspeakers such as the VTX A-Series and the SRX900 series. We’ve done this at really iconic spaces such as the Beacon Theatre in New York, the Kennedy Center at Washington DC, and even the Grand Ole Opry. Most recently we’ve developed this rigging structure which allows us to hang, display and demo a nice selection of our most bread and butter
commercial loudspeakers – the ones that are commonly applicable over a wide range of different install applications. This whole thing breaks down and fits into the back of a Sprinter van. So we now have the ability to set this up, quickly execute it, break it down, put it in the Sprinter van and move down the road to the next event. It has given us the ability to scale this demo experience for our market. We’ve actually set a goal for this year to do about 100 of these.
Tell us about Harman’s number one global market share in the portable PA sector and how over a three-year period the company refreshed the entire PA line.
Over the three year period we actually refreshed our entire portable PA product line. Our portable PA products are the products that are generally used
for sound reinforcement for stage events or speech amplification, musicians, DJs, or they’re used for amplification of musical instruments. In that category of products, we refreshed our entire EON series. Refreshing the entire portable PA line actually helped us protect our number one market share and made us stronger coming out of the pandemic than we were going in. We also launched a brand new series called the IRX Series, which has an eight inch and 12 inch point-and-shoot speaker. These products are packed with features and performance that we’ve never been able to offer before at these particular price points. We also replaced our PRX 800 series with the PRX 900 series, and those products provide a more powerful type of audio performance that are suitable for larger rooms or corporate applications, and even some install applications.
What makes the SRX900 series unique and how it has managed a first for Harman in terms of it being extremely successful across all three market segments: retail, install and tour?
Probably the most unique and successful product launch that we had during the period of covid was the SRX900 series. This product launch has been so successful and so unique. In my 14 years at Harman this is the only product I’ve ever seen that has had such mass appeal and massive success across all three
segments that we serve, which are retail, install and tour. The product is self powered, which means that the amplifier is built inside. It’s affordable and scalable, which means our customers can start small and then build the system to whatever level that their needs require. It’s made for small and medium size, sound reinforcement applications. It’s perfect for musicians who want a higher level of performance and portability. It’s great for fixed installations at smaller venues and houses of worship. It’s even applicable for rental companies who rent gear to customers for corporate events or music festivals. There was a lot of product development involved and we were very busy; it’s certainly paying dividends for us now.
Harman Pro has a very diversified portfolio, with legendary brands like JBL, AKG and Crown that represent significant innovation in the pro audio industry. What would you say are a few personal highlights across the brands?
I love this question, because I’m so proud to work at Harman and there’s so many things that I ought to pick. I’ll start with this: when you walk into the experience center, the first thing you see are three Grammys. We are the only manufacturer (to my knowledge) that has won three Grammys. Back in 2005, JBL won a Grammy for what was called ‘lasting contribution to culture around the world’ and that’s because Woodstock would not have happened without JBL. Then in 2010, we got a Grammy for AKG, which is our brand of headphones and microphones. That Grammy was for the contributions that AKG has made to the recording industry. AKG was present at that famous Beatles show at Shea Stadium, as well as in many of the Abbey Road studio recordings that The Beatles did. If you look at the Quincy Jones We Are The World video with all of those artists, almost everyone in the room, including Quincy, is wearing the iconic AKG K240 headphones. Our AKG mics have been used by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Garth Brooks. Then we got our third Grammy in 2014 with the Lexicon brand, for what the Recording Academy called the ‘magical sounds of Lexicon equipment’. Lexicon is a brand that we use on a variety of effects processors, and these processors create modulation or delay. Most famously Lexicon creates an effect called reverb and it’s actually a widespread belief that almost 80% of all music that you hear was recorded using one of those Lexicon effects. So those are three incredible things that I’m proud of as far as our brands and our culture and heritage.
Tell us about Harman’s market share and dominance in professional sports and how you’re forging strategic partnerships with arena operators to showcase your installations for consultants and integrators.
We have a massive market share dominance in professional sports, namely NFL football, NBA, basketball and NHL hockey, and what we’ve done to protect and sustain this market share dominance is we’ve forged
strategic partnerships with some of the key stadium and arena operators. What this has done is given us unprecedented access to these venues so that we can showcase and demo the Harman gear that’s installed there. That allows us to take consultants and integrators into these venues when there’s not a game going on and do a private tech tour and demo the parks for them. Many times we’ll bring these customers back and put them in some premium or VIP seating and let them watch a basketball, hockey or football game while they’re listening to the loudspeakers perform in a live environment with thousands of screaming fans, so that’s something that I’m really proud of as well. Lastly I would mention our worldwide market share across all vertical markets: retail, install and tour. JBL has enjoyed the number one market share globally in the loudspeaker space for a number of years and our iconic Crown brand of power amplifiers also has the number one market share, and has had for a number of years.
What advice do you have for the industry and for up-andcoming professionals looking to break into the industry?
We love our competitors and our competitors make us better. As tough as the pandemic has been, our company is in such a great place. I believe Harman is the best version of itself that I’ve seen in the last 14 years. My advice to individuals looking to break into this industry is: audio expertise is absolutely critical. At the end of the day, we’re a technical company selling technical products to technical people. You can’t minimize the importance of having subject matter expertise when it comes to audio. Also, don’t forget about the people side of it. I got into this space with no pro audio experience, but I was fortunate enough to pick up some experiences throughout my career where I learned how to lead and develop people; I learned how to create strategy, communicate it, get the best out of people and be able to get people to execute on a plan. I learned a lot about taking care of the customer, putting the customer first and having a very customer-centric mentality, which is the people side of it. You’ve got to have the audio chops in most cases, but don’t forget about the people side of it. At the end of the day, we’re in a people business.
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Based in Montreal, Canada, Le Lab Mastering Studio is one of the most sought-after studios of its kind, catering for virtually every style and genre of music. It also features immersive audio mixing capabilities and includes its own vinyl cutting lathe. Headliner caught up with its multitalented founder Marc Thériault to talk market trends, how he continues to do live sound for Celine Dion when she’s on the road, and the Merging Technologies kit that has shaped his business.
Tell us about your route into the pro audio industry?
I was always interested in audio all the way back to when I was in school. I was in charge of the sound for end of year shows and student radio. My first job in audio was for a rental sound company that provided the equipment to the school. I showed up one day and said I wanted to work for the summer. That’s how I started. I was 16 and I was doing live shows and assisting others.
At age 21, I was mixing the main stages at Montreal Jazz Festival,
which was a pretty young age to be doing that. My wish was to design electronics for mixing desks and things like that, so I studied electrical engineering at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and got my degree. I kept mixing shows as well and got bigger and bigger offers working with different productions. At 24 I got a job touring with Celine Dion when she was getting bigger and bigger. I started as an assistant and I’m still working for her to this day. I oversee audio onstage for her shows. She knows what she wants, and we have a great relationship.
How did you end up opening a mastering studio?
Doing studio mixing and engineering recordings didn’t appeal to me. Mastering felt similar to live mixing in some ways. But I later studied music composition at UNLV in Las Vegas. In the context of live performances, a show unfolds each day and then concludes, much like the process of mastering. It’s one day after the other. So, I decided to open Le Lab Mastering Studio in 2009 and since then I’ve been doing mastering while also participating in live performances. At the very beginning the studio was fully analog, and then I discovered Merging Technologies and AoIP six or seven years ago.
How did you come into contact with Merging Technologies?
I have a colleague who does a lot of classical work and Merging is pretty significant in that world so that’s how I was introduced. The sound quality of their products has always been amazing. I already knew that, and the way they do things is amazing. They are pioneers.
I jumped into that and when the Anubis interface came out I loved everything about it. I based my studios around it and their technologies. I have a very close relationship with Merging and they always listen if you have a suggestion or an issue. It’s a great relationship.
How do Merging products figure in your setup?
The main thing is, because it’s AoiP (Ravenna), you can have a lot of channels traveling between the interfaces and the workstation, so I have that big matrix in front me, which means I can do things that no other interface can offer. In my main room, I use the Anubis as a monitor controller and I use the Happi mkII for A to D and D to A. I still have analog gear in the studio, so it allows me to do stem mastering and things like that.
In the Atmos room, I built my own monitor controller that goes to both of those units. It’s a controller on steroids. I like to calibrate everything, and I can do just that with an external computer on the Ravenna network. There were a ton of possibilities that you couldn’t do with regular analog equipment. I’ve tried a lot of products and Merging is the best of the best.
I also have a mobile studio setup that consists of one Anubis, a pair of headphones, a laptop and a mini computer. The Anubis is the key part because it’s the heart of the Ravenna network and it’s the F1 headphone amplifier. From there I have my network and my DAW. That’s all I need! Everything fits in my backpack, so I can do all the work in the box on the go if needed. The Anubis is the central unit for that and I don’t see any other product that can do all this. It sounds amazing and I love it!
What trends have you been seeing in the mastering industry?
We used to do albums but we do a lot more singles now. Rather than mastering and releasing an entire album all at once, there’s a focus on producing individual songs, which may be assembled and released collectively later on. Currently, artists emphasize the production of individual songs.
Also, everyone wants vinyl now. So, we cut vinyls here because at the
beginning clients would ask me to listen to their test pressings before it goes on the market, and there were always things they didn’t like but there was nothing I could do to fix those issues because it was cut somewhere else. We decided to invest in a cutting lathe to be able to provide higher quality products and be able to control how my masters translate to vinyl. We do a lot of vinyl for projects coming from inside and outside the studio.
What are you working on now?
We are currently remastering the entire Celine Dion catalog in Atmos. It’s a big, big job, and those timeless hits need to sound like people heard them or even better! We must be very close to the original mix and master, but we are expanding and improving them with immersive masters.
MERGING.COM
Production sound mixer Steve Morrow explains why due to using Lectrosonics on set, Bradley Cooper revealed that no ADR was required for the Oscar nominated film, Maestro.
Now streaming on Netflix, Maestro sees director and star Bradley Cooper chronicling the life of legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. Connecting its myriad chapters via the narrative of Bernstein’s marriage to actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), the film explores Bernstein-the-man in ways never taught at any music school. Maestro has already earned nominations for seven Academy Awards, seven BAFTA awards, and two Screen Actors Guild awards — and won an American Film Institute award. One of those Oscar nods is for Best Sound, and mixing lead Steve
Morrow, whose credits also include La La Land, A Star Is Born, and Ford v. Ferrari, had two equally challenging types of source to capture. First, a large cast dishing overlapping, rapid-fire dialogue; second, orchestral and choral music recorded in real time on set.
A long time Lectrosonics user, Morrow employed SSM transmitters and Venue2 modular receiver racks for actors, HMa plug-on transmitters for booms, and LT transmitters paired with a DSQD digital receiver for communications. Wireless Designer software was employed for frequency coordination.
What was the first time you worked with Lectrosonics equipment?
Like most sound mixers, I started out using prosumer-level brands that weren’t that great. Once broadcast HDTV had fully taken hold and wiped out a lot of our usable spectrum, I began to switch to Lectrosonics. When the SM-series transmitters first came out I got a bunch of those because they were the most compact thing going. Recently, including on Maestro, I use almost all SSMs on actors and plant mics because they’re even smaller. I’ve been with Lectro ever since.
Can you describe the rest of your wireless setup on Maestro?
Sure. We used the HMa plug-on transmitters for boom mics. I had my LT for my private line to my boom guys. These days I can’t imagine doing a film without being able to talk to my boom operators. With a ton of dialogue channels going at the same time, it just makes the work so much faster.
How about the receiver end of the equation?
For actor dialogue, we had three Venue2 systems going at once, so that’s 18 channels in total, which we needed with some of the party scenes where everyone is talking at once. Then I have one of the DSQD, the four-channel half-rack box, which I’m using mainly for comms and “voice of God” mics, as the Venue racks are paired with all the SSMs.
Bradley Cooper says he loves overlapping dialogue and mentioned you by name as having a talent for mixing in the moment. Can you elaborate on that process?
The best example is the big party scene that starts the movie being in color. The idea was to treat it almost like a documentary and in terms of sound, be a fly on the wall. Bradley made an announcement at the beginning of the day and simply instructed everyone, “Please be in character and in the era. You know what year this is, but other than that, just be at a party having a good time. Talk about what you want to talk about”.
For those kinds of scenes, we had 18 to 20 channels going including the SSMs on the actors, a couple of booms overhead, and some plant mics. That way we could capture the whole room, and Bradley’s direction made it feel more real. Of course, we’re able to isolate each track as every mic has its own channel. Then in post-production, the mixers spaced those out across surround channels, so watching the film you feel like you’re in the middle of the party as opposed to all the dialogue having that centerchannel feel. Wherever the camera went is what the audience mainly hears mix-wise, just as if you were walking around the party catching different bits of conversation. It’s a very Robert Altman-esque style, but I’d say now the difference is that the technology has caught up with
the idea that it can be narratively powerful to have, say, 20 people talking at once. We started really applying it in the 2018 Jason Reitman film The Front Runner. Also, on The Way Back, which was a basketball movie with Ben Affleck. We put a surround mic in the audience to get all the cheering and SSMs on all the actors. The first day shooting a game sequence, Ben asks, “We should all mime it, right?” I said, “No, just play basketball”. Thanks in part to Lectro’s performance, the feedback from post was that the tracks were perfect. Point being, Maestro was the culmination of everything we’ve learned about recording scenes so they feel as realistic as possible.
What was one of the most challenging scenes to shoot in Maestro?
In that big party scene, there were two cameras basically shooting two separate scenes at the same time: one centered on Bradley and the other on Carey Mulligan. How do you mix that? I feel like I gave post a bunch of chaos and they did a great job sorting it out. I did ride faders to make sure the mics sounded good – no scratching against clothes, things like that. The nice thing about multi-track is, you do have insurance. You just need to make sure each individual track sounds clean.
“MAESTRO WAS THE CULMINATION OF EVERYTHING WE’VE LEARNED ABOUT RECORDING SCENES SO THEY FEEL AS REALISTIC AS POSSIBLE.”
How did you handle frequency coordination with so many channels in use?
With the Wireless Designer software. It worked perfectly. You just show up in the morning and scan, then start popping things on.
For the Mahler concert in Ely Cathedral, you had to capture the entire orchestra but with enough instruments isolated so that post could focus attention on one section or the other. How did you do that on top of dialogue?
How did your Lectrosonics equipment perform in general?
For Ely, we had the London Symphony Orchestra, who brought in their recording team called Classic Sound. They totally got that delivery was going to be in Dolby Atmos. For our part, we brought a quadraphonic mic and a surround mic. As to wireless, we had an SSM on Bradley, an SSM on each of the main opera singers, a boom with, and a pair of [HMa] plug-ons for a mid-side stereo mic that tracked with the camera. The Ely concert was the biggest, but we recorded all the music performances live — the one with the choir, the one towards the end where he’s teaching students, all of it. Lectro is always solid. It’s one of those things that just turns on and works. It never gets in the way of what I’m able to accomplish. Look, if I’m going to have a bad take, I want it to be a personal failure, not an equipment failure. If I made a mistake, I can learn from it and correct it, which is a lot easier if I’m not babysitting my gear.
Maestro is as densely filled with music as it is with dialogue. Can you speak to the audio quality of the tracks you delivered to post, for both types of sources?
Both exceeded all expectations. When I watched the movie for the
first time, I was amazed. I asked Bradley Cooper, “What did you have to ADR or re-record?” He said, “Nothing. It’s all production. It’s all original”. That’s a testament to how well Lectrosonics works and how good it sounds. And again, this was a wireless-heavy movie given all the wide shots and overlapping dialogue.
Were there any outdoor scenes or walk-and-talks that presented a particular challenge in terms of range?
Well, it certainly wasn’t like Ford v. Ferrari where we were dealing with dialog in cars on a racetrack. One scene comes to mind. In Central Park where Bernstein and Oppenheim [Matt Bomer] are walking in the park with Oppenheim’s wife and baby. There was dialogue in the script, so that’s how we recorded it even though the take where you don’t hear them is
the one that made the cut. I think they walked about 100 yards. You always stretch your equipment, but Lectrosonics always works.
Maestro didn’t have a lot of physical action, but in other films, how have Lectrosonics packs stood up to harsh environments or other abuse?
Very well. There was one scene in A Star Is Born where Lady Gaga and her friend are getting on a plane, and her friend just starts dancing around in circles, spinning. On one take, the actor’s SSM came out of his sock and was just cartwheeling all over the tarmac. It didn’t go down. They work all day in extreme heat or cold, or when an actor is in the pouring rain.
GLP pulled out all the stops for lighting designers Mat Stovall and Manny Treeson when video game developer Blizzard Entertainment’s BlizzCon 2023 was held at the Anaheim Convention Center in southern California recently…
Held for the first time since 2019 (when Covid intervened), Blizzard reconfigured the space so that all four giant halls were requisitioned to give fans early access to the latest updates for all of its landmark games (World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo and Hearthstone) via themed playable stations. Additionally, the arena was converted into a proscenium stage for hosting keynotes, speaker panels and trailer drops – as well as the spectacular opening and closing ceremonies, all streamed live to millions around the world.
To keep pace with the next-generation technology employed in the video game world, Stovall and Treeson, who have routinely carried GLP fixtures in their respective toolboxes, turned to the German manufacturer again to provide a unique packaged solution.
Working for event producer Zed Ink, the two designers approached GLP towards the beginning of the year, with an idea they had for something special – not just a fixture but a whole scenic solution that could be used at BlizzCon, as well as future Blizzard Activision events.
“It started when I told them we would be bringing our X4 atom fixture onto the new X5 platform,” says GLP president Mark Ravenhill. “As avid atom users, this was music to their ears.”
According to Manny Treeson, they fundamentally wanted to do away with the traditional approach of miles of cable and truss up in the air. A think tank was formed under
“WE ALL SCRATCHED OUR HEADS, AND THEN THE IDEA OF A KIND OF ‘TREE’ WITH INTEGRATED LIGHTING STARTED TO TAKE SHAPE.”
Erin Hearne Williams, lead creative director of BC23. “We all scratched our heads,” says Treeson, “and then the idea of a kind of groundsupported architectural ‘tree’ with integrated lighting, which could carry weight, banners, scenic lanterns and other elements, started to take shape. Stovall worked hand in hand with production designer Stephen Leonhardt to develop the design layout for the trees.”
This “cadence of structures” distributed throughout BlizzCon would carry the mighty X5 atoms. Their idea was for
150 of these banner-supporting light towers, each containing four X5 atoms – giving a total of 600 pieces.
Ravenhill banged heads with the tech team in Germany, and not only did they believe that this could be realized within the time frame, but GLP’s head of project management, Marc Rapp, knew all the right people for the design, fabrication, wiring and finishing of the scenic parts.
The fact that the atoms would be on the X5 platform was great news, particularly to Mat Stovall – a veteran of this event – who would be tasked with delivering this creative scenic animation.
He acknowledges: “Since those towers are 16ft tall we were excited to get the atoms as X5 versions, because they are noticeably punchier than the previous iteration.
“We knew we were definitely up against time with so much fabrication. The fact that GLP knew they would be able to provide both the lighting fixture and the fabrication for these light trees and package it in a way that could be installed really quickly and efficiently is what led us down this road.”
Ravenhill rubber stamped the fixture’s superior output: “It would also give them higher CRI and a larger color gamut than we had previously with the X4 atom.”
The design underwent several iterations of the tower fabric along the way, and appropriately themed powder coat colors were chosen,
before being fitted with fixtures and wired, with final assembly taking place at GLP Los Angeles. “One of our production electricians built the first one and just said ‘wow’,” the designers reveal.
This created surreal and otherworldly immersive environments for the various gaming areas. But it didn’t stop there. Over in the arena, Treeson took responsibility for the lighting of this part of BlizzCon. He chose another of GLP’s small and versatile fixtures, the impression FR1, to be built into the dimensional structures on stage – further supported by impression X4 Bar 20s that lined the front edge of the stage, and banks of JDC1s for effect and wash use, all in a rig supplied by Illumination Dynamics. This rig was put to use constantly throughout the event, including hosting all speaker panels, which were also streamed to the world. Ensuring that he chose fixtures with proven broadcast performance was essential in Treeson’s design.
Back in the main halls, Stovall added to the X5 atom towers with GLP impression FR1s and FR10 Bars that were integrated into the set, and
scenic elements for the various game titles, while he added banner lighting via impression X4 Bar 20s.
Christie Lites took care of the supply of all lighting and support elements within the main halls.
Treeson was quick to commend his colleague on devising such a clever and imaginative system that was made to be simple ‘plug and play’, stating: “I’m tremendously proud of what we have achieved and particularly what Mat has created.”
The latter, meanwhile, praised GLP’s tiny gem, and particularly the X5 atom’s new IQ.Gamut color mix algorithm: “The added range of color in the X5 Series was a huge benefit,” he concludes. “As with any corporation with a specific IP the closer and wider the color gamut you have to work with the more effective it is for the clients –and the happier they are in terms of color range.”
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