Printworks

68 VENUE - EMEA

Photos by C Faruolo

PRINTWORKS

LONDON, UK

EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA

dbnAudile has helped to transform this industrial relict into one of the English capital’s hippest dance venues.

Dancing where iron giants used to print the Daily Mail, Metro, and the Evening Standard; the size of nine football pitches and a capacity for up to 5,500 people (4,000 in club mode), Printworks is one of the biggest nightclubs in London, UK. However, the vast venue located in the South-East of the capital does not only stand out because of its size and post-industrial atmosphere - dbnAudile has recently equipped the former print house with state-of-the-art sound and lighting systems. Steel pillars, concrete floors, and working platforms - everything reminds visitors of the former purpose of this 16-acre venue. Until 2013, this was home to massive multi-storey presses, which churned out thousands of

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69 VENUE - EMEA

newspapers per hour. Actually, this factory used to be the biggest printing facility in Western Europe. Particularly striking are the print halls, each over 100 metres long. Today, the gigantic high-ceiling rooms form the heart of Printworks, a multi-functional event space at London’s Surrey Quays, run by Broadwick Venues. Due to its enormous dimensions, powerful sound is essential to run gigs in this spacious venue. Manchesterbased supplier, dbnAudile, has designed a loudspeaker system utilising d&b audiotechnik products. Director Rob Ashworth, takes up the story: “In the

live space are four delayed lines of stereo loudspeakers, all flown quite low to keep everyone close to the loudspeakers, and maximise the direct sound they hear in the reverberant space.” To accomplish that, dbnAudile used twice as many loudspeakers as they would normally for this audience capacity. “It’s an awful lot of kit - there are 48 top boxes flown for a 3,500 capacity audience,” added Rob. “We really didn’t want anyone being more than 15-metres away from a loudspeaker array, with complete consistency of level and tonality throughout the space.” Rob and his team chose a mixture of d&b audiotechnik’s J-Series and V-Series.

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LED COLOR MIXTURE

_ Unique color mixture with

RGBAW + lemon + UV _ 25 watts per LED _ Zoom from 3-34° (X7) and 4-31° (X19)

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70 VENUE - EMEA

• Left Extremely high ceilings and industrial features contribute to Printworks unique character.

• Right dbnAudile usevideo installations as another type of lighting fixtures.

He said: “It starts with two lines of the J-Series, and then V-Series for the back. J-SUBs are under the stage and we have some J-INFRAs here as well, if it’s a bassheavy act,” Rob described while standing in the gig space. He highlighted the subwoofers’ performance too: “The J-INFRAs extend the bass all the way down to 22Hz without any roll-off - that gives it a real physical element.” Additionally, dbnAudile has put a DiGiCo SD12 and a Yamaha PM5D- RH desk in place, which can be used by the bands’ sound engineers. In total, Printworks consists of six rooms that can host different types of cultural events from art shows, company parties, classical concerts, dining events, and gigs. Next to the live space and accessible through it, guests will find a narrower room with the attached chamber bay, which is used for Printworks’ club nights. Rob explained why installing the products in the neighbouring, equally high-roofed hall has been a challenge: “The problem in here is that it’s so narrow. The floor space between the balconies is only five-metres wide, and with much of the audience under the balconies, it’s not possible to fly loudspeakers as we do in the live space. So we’ve designed a system of six lines of J-Series and V-Series groundstacks, using 36 top boxes and 36 subwoofers, plus four J-INFRAs. d&b audiotechnik’s cardioid subwoofer technology is invaluable in this situation, minimising the cancellation that would happen with multiple stacks of normal omnidirectional subs in this arrangement.” However, the industrial architecture brings some advantages as Rob recalled: “One of the great benefits of working within Printworks was that it’s really well soundproofed - I mean, these machines must have been incredibly noisy.” The

sound system is complemented by a visual display, particularly in the electronic space where eight truss pods are flown from Kinesys motors, allowing them to move over the audience’s heads, from the highest reaches of the five-storey space down to the first-floor balcony level. On these pods are a mixture of Clay Paky, Robe and Martin by HARMAN lighting fixtures, together with LED video panels. More fixtures are positioned on and above the stage, and along the balconies are further LED video panels spaced along the length of the vast space. “We tend to use video in most of our lighting designs for club and dance events - it’s another type of lighting fixture essentially. A lot of the time people just install a 16:9 ratio screen at the back of the stage and they run some content on it, but this is a lot more abstract and immersive,” Rob emphasised. To reach an optimal effect dbnAudile’s Lighting Operator, Dave Ross, synchronises colours and moods with the video content, and with the lasers. “It’s unusual to find that level of integration. We’ve got four guys operating lights, video, lasers and Kinesys, working

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

SOUND 24 x d&b audiotechnik J8/J12 loudspeaker; 28 x d&b audiotechnik V8/V12 loudspeaker; 12 x d&b audiotechnik J-SUB subwoofer; d&b audiotechnik D-Series amplifiers; 12 x d&b audiotechnik M4 monitor; 2 x d&b audiotechnik Q-SUB subwoofer; 2 x d&b audiotechnik C7-TOP loudspeaker; 4 x d&b audiotechnik C7-SUB subwoofer; 1 x DiGiCo SD12 mixing console; 1 x Yamaha PM5D-RH mixing console; 1 x Lake LM44 processor

LIGHTING & VISUAL 12 x Clay Paky Mythos 2 moving head; 24 x Robe Robin 100 LEDBeam moving head; 12 x Clay Paky AlphaWash 700 moving head; 12 x Clay Paky Stormy CC moving head; 12 x Thomas 2-lite fixture; 12 x ETC Source Four Junior fixture; 2 x Look Unique 2 fog machine; 2 x JEM ZR44 fog machine; 2 x JEM AF1 fan; 1 x MA Lighting grandMA 2 Light console; 6 x EXE Rise hoist; 8 x CM Lodestar hoist; Outboard Electronics hoist control; Slick Minibeam truss

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together in close communication, and it’s such a slick show as a result,” praised Rob. As both print halls host music events but with only one open on any particular night, Rob’s team had to come up with a creative solution - the equipment moves between venues. “We’ve put the infrastructure in place to just move the loudspeakers, lights and control equipment between spaces, with just a simple cable swap on the amplifier racks and lighting distribution. It can still be quite a stressful operation, as Rob explained: “At weekends it can be a live event on a Friday night and then a club on the Saturday so everything has to be moved overnight. It’s a big job, but it’s doable - no different to touring production really, just with venues that are only a few metres apart.” Various famous live acts and DJs such as Deadmau5 have already been confirmed for the coming months. Looking at the future of Printworks Rob concluded: “There’s nothing quite like this in the world, let alone London. There’s a real buzz about Printworks, and a definite hunger for it.”

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