[New] CARL COX: LIVE AT OVO ARENA WEMBLEY

Carl Cox makes the much-anticipated leap from DJ to live electronic artist with the support of live events architects behind the scenes.

On 15 October 2022, Carl Cox performed his new album, Electronic Generations, live for the first time at OVO Wembley Arena to a crowd of 12,500 electronic dance music fans. This pivotal moment in his decadesspanning career marked a shift from DJ to live electronic artist.

Cox’s evolution into live performances emerged during lockdown when Awesome Soundwave Live Online Festival III burst onto our screens in December 2020, signifying a change in direction for the king of dance music. The living room party was well and truly established by then and here was some of the most progressive programming to come out of the streaming boom. World-renowned and respected as a DJ, here he was with a new live electronic production format. “I think I’ve taken that whole DJ thing to the very pinnacle,” said Cox. “Probably more than anyone else, and I can’t go any further. I could keep going with that or move away and create a new path. Right here is an interesting place to be, because we don’t know where it’s going to go.”

Production Director, Jim Baggott of The nvisible Agency, who has helped produce

Carl Cox’s large-scale live shows for over two decades, and Show Designer, Andy Hurst assembled a crack team of touring professionals for the show, enlisting the technical support and expertise of FunktionOne and Audio Plus, ZEROdB Live, Lights Control Rigging, ER Productions, 80six, Rebel Overlay, Ambrose Productions and Alpha Crew to make the ambitious project a reality. “All the suppliers and crew involved have exceeded our expectations,” he began.

“T his show is a powerful statement,” Baggott outlined. “It’s the first time Carl has performed a live show under the Awesome Soundwave banner in the UK and to do it at a space like OVO Wembley Arena with a dynamic production design is equally as special.”

Cox has enjoyed a special friendship with British professional loudspeaker system inventor and manufacturer Funktion-One that spans some 20 years, forming a lasting bond in their shared spiritual home – Space Ibiza. It’s a relationship built on mutual respect and genuine passion for bringing good music to the people. “I’ve known of Funktion-One from the very beginning,” Cox recalled. “I’ve been fortunate to play on all types of their systems over the years. It comes from the heart with them – it’s not just business.”

With collective mindsets safely out of the box, Funktion-One approached the sound system design for Wembley with a licence –granted by Cox and his production team – to experiment. While the venue is iconic and much loved, it presents some challenges when it comes to audio. Inside, the abundance of hard surfaces makes it very reverberant, while outside it’s surrounded by hundreds of newly built private residences. The aim was maximum audience enjoyment with minimum disruption to the neighbours. “We are in the middle of where people live. We can’t go renegade and say, right, we don’t care, turn it up, have everything. It’s how you cover the room with that amount of sound,” Cox remarked.

Control of the low frequencies was fundamental to this. Funktion-One’s Tony Andrews explained: “We want to keep the sound out of the roof, not annoy the neighbours, and have more sound on the dancefloor. The way we’re going to do this is with a tower of 24 F124s. We know we can do a ground stack six tall and two wide, but beyond that it starts to get a bit dangerous, so we’ve got 12 on the ground and 12 suspended in a cage above, which is lowered to connect to the six on the ground, creating a 12-high, two-wide, 8.5m high bass tower.

“If your wavelength is bigger than your exit, you will start to get more and more diffraction as that difference increases. If we stack them 8.5m tall, we won’t have diffraction in the vertical dimension, meaning the soundwaves will mostly stay within the height of the bass tower. For rear rejection, the tower is a cardioid configuration. Furthermore, we have flown the Vero at maximum width apart to fully enjoy its stereo imaging capabilities,” he added.

“At one point I said to Tony, I have no idea what you’re doing,” said Cox. “I used to run sound systems and always put subs on the floor, but Tony’s a genius – I trust his vision.”

All sound equipment was supplied by Funktion-One partner Audio Plus, including PA, monitors, desks and all equipment requests from the artists.

Company Owner, Stefan Imhof directed the crew, alongside PA System Technician, Tino Reschke; Monitor Engineer, Stuart Thompson and Stage Technician, Ben Wilbee. FunktionOne’s Will Wright took on FOH duties, while Tony Andrews was very much hands on and ever-present throughout.

The sound system comprised stereo main hangs of 13 Vero loudspeakers each side, along with the 24 F124 bass tower stage right. To ensure even bass levels on the opposite side, a fill stack of six F221 dual 21in horn- loaded subs was deployed stage left. The addition of Evo 7T infills and outfills provided seamless coverage to the front of the crowd.

Reschke said: “Apart from its renowned sonic clarity and imaging capabilities, Vero’s controlled dispersion behaviour was ideal to focus the sound precisely onto the audience area, keeping it away from reflective surfaces in the arena. The eight Vero V315 low mid cabinets combined with the huge vertical F124 array to present an impressive kick like no other large-format sound system on the market.”

Due to the experimental nature of the system, testing was carried out at Audio Plus’s premises in Colchester in the lead up to the show. All the preparation, planning and willingness to try something a little different in the name of great audio was worth it.

‘A TEAM EFFORT’

With five live acts in the DJ booth at any one time, the team developed a roller system with wheel boards on top of the booth tables, with dedicated areas for the DJs and their team to set up prior to doors opening. “The rigging was a challenge,” Baggott reported. “We’re hanging a lot of stuff, which is mainly concentrated around a small stage area rather than a standard 60ft by 40ft stage, but we have managed to overcome these challenges.”

Baggott worked alongside Production Manager, Alex Anderson of Louder, who he described as “integral” and “supportive” throughout the entire production process. “This is a team effort,” Baggott said. “Carl and his Tour Manager, Ian Hussey, like to be involved in the creative process, which is always refreshing and helps create the best show possible.”

Anderson commented: “It’s been a pleasure to work with Carl Cox, Jim Baggott and Show Designer, Andy Hurst through the whole design process. They and our wonderful suppliers all rose to the challenge. It was a complicated build, but the outcome is outstanding and a testament to Carl’s vision for his live performance at the OVO Arena Wembley.”

Hurst picked up the story: “These types of one-off shows have to be run live because there are no production rehearsals – and with seven hours of continuous music, you never know what’s coming apart from the fact it’s live techno,” Hurst explained, noting the challenges of the task at hand. “Loading in a one-off show on the day always brings up some issues as it’s the first time it’s been built.”

Hurst’s production design centred around a DJ booth on risers, two ladders of lighting truss per side, a cascading back wall of LED and lighting, and a solitary front truss.

The rig was made up of 32 Ayrton Cobra, 24 GLP JDC Line 1000 and 16 impression X4 Bar 10 lighting units, which were split across flown lighting trusses, flanking the central DJ booth. An additional 14 JDC1 units were dotted above on a flown truss, with a further 16 making up the floor package, along with 12 Claypaky Xtylos fixtures, six situated on each side of the riser.

A central back wall of 18 GLP impression X4 Bar 20s were spaced nine per side above the DJ booth with a pair of Domino LTs flown either side of central truss for key light. The visuals were controlled by Show Designer, Andy Hurst and Lighting Operator, Billy Jones, on a ChamSys MQ500 main and backup console, all supplied by Lights Control Rigging.

In addition to the creative capabilities of GLP, Hurst pinpointed Cobras and Claypaky’s laser-source Xtylos fixtures from LCR’s inventory as the workhorse fixtures of the lighting rig. “I’m really pleased with this production design, and I believe Carl Cox and his team are equally happy with the result. I must also complement the excellent visual content by Rebel Overlay and Lighting

Operator, Billy Jones, along with LCR, 80six and the wider production crew who have all done an amazing job.”

‘SIMPLY THE BEST!’

A staple of Carl Cox shows – having also collaborated on Space Ibiza live shows every Sunday through the busy summer season – ER Productions was on-hand to provide lasers and CO2 to proceedings. “All Carl Cox shows are great,” ER Productions’ Ryan Hagen commented. “He is simply the master of his art, so his shows need to match that.”

To t his end, ER Productions provided six AT-20 lasers, which were positioned on the downstage edge along with six Cryo-Jets. “Once we are set and the systems are safe to use, we hand control over to the lighting team, so this means loading an ER Workspace onto the ER Servers and Andy Hurst and Billy

Jones taking control via the lighting desk and selecting cues in a similar fashion to video servers,” Hagen said, summing up the experience. “It’s always a pleasure working alongside Andy. We have a longstanding relationship which has seen us work together now for many years and to combine this with a Carl Cox show is simply the best!” 80six Project Manager, Ben Annibal was tasked with overseeing the pre-production of the video elements of the show and subsequent delivery on site. “This is our first show with Carl Cox; Andy Hurst got in touch about coming on board to provide the video elements of the show after working together on some other shows recently.”

The upstage wall was made up of ROE Visual Vanish 8 LED panels, the DJ riser surround featured MC7, powered by Evision HD102 processors, Blackmagic Terranex Mini optical converters, a Lightware MX2 matrix and a Neutrik OpticalCON quad fibre system.

“Vanish 8 enables the LD to have lights behind the screen for particular looks in the show – something that is quite common now and popular with lighting designers to help create depth,” Annibal said.

“I don’t think the video overpowers the other elements of the show, which can sometimes happen,” he acknowledged. “Spencer from Rebel Overlay did a great job of using PTZ cameras to catch some good action shots of Carl without it being too camera-heavy in the content. It’s great to collaborate with other people to create the best show possible.”

Squeezing the DJ riser screen onto a small stage, however, posed a challenge with the weight required to use as ballast. “The riser for Carl Cox is quite large, so we had to work with the staging supplier to manage the weight loading and positioning of the screen,” Annibal said. “Thankfully, we’ve managed to pull off a great show as a team.”

Media Server Operators and Content

Designers, Spencer Heron and Daniel Winchcombe of Rebel Overlay, mixed cameras, video loops and motion graphic assets live and in time with the music, while maintaining an overall aesthetic that matched and worked alongside Andy Hurst’s production design.

“We have worked with Carl Cox for a number of years, providing content and video playback since the Revolution days at Space Ibiza, and we are usually involved somewhere on his larger productions, like Carl Cox Megastructure for Resistance at Ultra Miami or his recent On The Beach Brighton appearance this summer,” the designers stated.

“T his show is a simple setup and is made primarily for live performance. We never really know what Carl is going to play, but we have a good idea on style, aesthetic and tempo and we work from there.”

Describing their content style and aesthetic as “minimalistic”, Rebel Overlay manipulates the LED screens layout and shape to curate unique, custom inch-perfect pixel-mapped shows.

For content, the designers used two Resolume Arena media server laptops with Traktor F1 midi control surfaces. For cameras, the designers used a DataVideo HS-1500T HDBaseT system with PTC-150 cameras. As an Awesome Soundwave show, the camera FX and looks are subtle in design with the objective of capturing unique moments and relaying that information to the LED screens.

Heron and Winchcombe pinpointed the DataVideo HS-1500T HDBaseT system with PTC-150 cameras as integral elements in their setup. “It’s quite geeky and perhaps not so impressive, but they use just a single Cat6 line to each camera for power, signal and pant/tilt.”

At 10:30pm, as the doors to Wembley Arena opened and the crowd flooded in, Awesome Soundwave artists Charlie Thorstenson, An On Bast, Marc Romboy and Christopher Coe took their turns at the helm before Cox delivered the final performance of the night. This was a voyage through electronic music and an audio experience that left a lasting impression.

“It was the best sound I’ve ever heard in an arena like this,” Coe reflected. “The bass was consistent across the whole audience and it was so sweet, with a controlled bottom end that was warm, full and punchy, and a crystal clear top end. It was just brilliant.”

Cox concluded: “We all knew that we had our work cut out to produce the very best sound that Wembley has ever heard. It was an incredible journey – one I will never forget.” www.carlcox.com www.nvisibleagency.com www.funktion-one.com www.audioplusuk.com www.er-productions.com www.80-six.com www.lcr-rental.com www.rebeloverlay.com www.zerodblive.com www.alphacrew.co.uk

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