U2: eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE

Few bands have influenced the evolution of live concert production quite like U2. For more than 25 years, the band’s tours have consistently broken creative and technological boundaries, and their pioneering spirit continues in earnest with eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE. Mark Cunningham reports from Paris.

Above: The Irish 4-piece triumphantly return to the stage.

Less than a year after spectacularly reimagining The Joshua Tree for the album’s 30th anniversary, U2 have returned to the road to deal with some unfinished business, namely eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE, the belated concluding half of a loosely autobiographical tour cycle that began in 2015 with iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE.

Five dates into the current European leg, TPi arrived at the AccorHotels Arena in Paris to meet a raft of familiar backstage faces and witness the revised show. The 2 tours’ associated albums dominated much of U2’s electrifying performance, though not at the expense of old gems such as New Year’s Day, Pride and Vertigo. Meanwhile, Bono – fully recovered after losing his voice a few days earlier – maintained his protagonist role, punctuating the songs with a compelling call for unity in Europe, and reprising his diabolical character from Zoo TV, MacPhisto.

While the frontman basks in the limelight with The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr, many of U2’s loyal touring entourage are equally championed throughout the industry – people like Joe O’Herlihy, the fount of audio wisdom now celebrating 40 years with the band, Willie Williams, U2’s creative visionary since ’82, and Jake Berry, the peerless production field marshal. Together, they raise the bar and then set it higher… and higher.

Williams explained that while this current campaign was slated as part of a 2-year project, with back-to-back tours succeeding their associated records, fate decided it would take 5 years. He worked closely with Es Devlin and Stufish’s Ric Lipson throughout the design process that began in 2013 with a “mad weekend” in the south of France. “It was our first meeting with the band and Mark Fisher was in attendance, but was gravely ill. Very sadly, this was one of the last things he ever did,” said Williams of the mentor who died just months later.

“Unusually, instead of talking about stages or shapes, the band discussed the record they were making – Songs Of Innocence – and how they were going to dig into their upbringing. Being the same age and coming from a similar background, I’m able to relate to many of their childhood memories.”

Acclaimed set designers in their own right, Lipson and Devlin established a fluid alliance with Williams alongside regular creative contributors including Gavin Friday, Sharon Blankson and Morleigh Steinberg. “I learned from Mark that if you trust your team, you can be very loose about the boundaries,” explained Williams. “While Ric is very much about the technical design but appreciates the conceptual, Es comes from the narrative angle but understands how things are built.”

Rather than be guided by CAD, the trio created a large ‘style guide’ scrapbook for presentation to the band. Williams: “Es and I were cutting things out and sticking them on pages next to drawings and paintings, and this book carried the spirit of everything that came out of our weekend with the band.”

Lipson jokingly referred to this “workshop of weirdos”, adding: “Es’ input was central to teasing the stories out of songs and placing them in reality. The aesthetic of her hand-drawn imagery drove the style of Innocence and that’s how we came to source Oliver Jeffers to make the screen illustrations for Cedarwood Road, an important part of the story that places Bono back in his old street.”

BALLAD OF THE BARRICAGE On the eve of the first Paris show, Jake Berry welcomed TPi into his office for a chat about life in general… and Guy Oseary’s firm Maverick, which took over management of U2 after Paul McGuinness’ departure. “It hasn’t changed anything in terms of what I deal with on tour,” he insisted. “Some things we do have been etched in stone since I arrived 17 years ago and you can’t rewrite the Ten Commandments.”

Berry’s A-team of vendors load in at each venue one day prior to a show, the technical production in Europe travels in 31 Transam trucks and Beat The Street transports 85 crew in 8 buses. With the drivers and the band’s entourage, U2’s personnel swells to around 160 by late afternoon.

Representing social division and providing the show’s main focal point is the ‘Barricage’, a 29m long, 7m high, double-sided billboard screen that splits the arena in 2 and is suspended 5m above the runway. Although U2 have essentially repurposed i+e’s basic design, there are numerous key differences such as the Barricage’s significant upgrade following the decision to add movement to the previously static internal catwalk, enabling it to rise, descend and tilt up to 5° on 18 automated Nav hoists, independently of the screen structure. To guarantee sensible weight loading, Tait and PRG collaborated to reimagine the components.

Aaron Siebert, Senior Project Manager at staging and automation provider Tait, said: “We had to build new header trusses that could accommodate the automation to support the 27m long catwalk and distribute that load. The Barricage itself moves up and down on 8 of our 3 ton jumbo hoist motors built into a custom spanner truss.” The structure also features a staircase and a small lift at opposite ends to allow the band to exit on to the stages.

Tait’s universal equipment package travels on 9 trucks and loads into each venue within 8 hours, with Flory Turner and Robin Henry heading the carpentry and automation teams, respectively. “Owing to the Barricage being so central, it’s difficult to conduct other work during its construction, but load-out takes around 3 hours,” added Siebert.

Another major difference is the video medium itself. While V-Thru made an impression in 2015, PRG’s brief was to develop a screen that had the same appearance but was considerably lighter in weight. Coincidentally, on a recent trip to China, Frederic Opsomer of PRG Projects had discovered a highly transparent LED screen that had been designed for shop window advertising, and saw its live show potential. Pure 10 was born.

Compared to V-Thru, Pure 10 has 10 times the pixel resolution and at just 10kg per square metre, there is a weight reduction of 40%. Being intended for a different environment, however, meant that its elements were too exposed to deal with touring. PRG responded by packaging the product within a thin protective carbon fibre structure.

Opsomer’s PRG colleague Mark O’Herlihy said: “V-Thru offered more of an effect than image fidelity and coming so close to The Joshua Tree, when we were doubling up 4K resolution with the pixel power we had, meant that returning to 28mm pitch may have been seen as a step in the wrong direction.”

The crispness of its image reproduction allows Pure 10 to make maximum sense of the video content, especially its many political statements. Opsomer commented: “Obviously, weight was the big consideration but out of that we gained a huge resolution upgrade that will open up many doors outside of music.”

ROLLING ON Bookmarking the Barricage and 36.5m long runway are the main I-stage and satellite E-stage. Measuring 19.4m wide and 10.8m deep, the I-stage remains virtually identical, save for a few amendments that have cleaned up some of the lighting looks. The 7.3m diameter E-stage, however, was another rebuild comprising of PRG’s Rolling Video Floor Risers and a Tait sub-structure.

Said Opsomer: “PRG Projects developed a special riser system last year and it’s been upgraded for the E-stage. Each riser contains 2 ROE Visual 4mm tiles – offering fantastic scope for video content and the ‘e’ logo – and integrated magnets that enable a fast build and breakdown. Jake is particularly happy with this system because we have [1.6 high] custom dollies that each accommodate 6 risers and dramatically reduce air freight costs.”

An automation grid above the E-stage uses a Smart Winch and 6 Nav Hoists to move props, such as the LED ring and mirror ball in Even Better Than The Real Thing and the final song’s light bulb. To allow seamless element transitions, Tait Navigator operates all show elements and provides real-time 3D position feedback.

Having the band play sideways down the arena creates a stunning vantage point for the audience on the north and south sides of the Barricage. This means, however, that those seated at the east and west ends are not so fortunate. Williams accepts the limitations: “The traditional best seats have almost become a dead zone although being in front of the E-stage is great because the band spend so much time there. It’s arguably not so good if you’re behind the band on the I-stage, but the cheaper ticket pricing reflects that so we’re being very transparent.”

Tait’s Aaron Siebert; PRG Projects’ Frederic Opsomer; members of the Treatment team include Technical Project Manager Julia Goldberg, and Producer Lizzie Pocock.

ARTISTIC CONTENT At a time when rock show visuals can be art for art’s sake, the most refreshing aspect of e+i is that every single frame of video content is significant. Around 85% of the material is brand new and the task of creation and curation was handed to Treatment, the business co-owned by Williams and Sam Pattinson, whose team includes producer Lizzie Pocock, Technical Project Manager Julia Goldberg and production manager Helen Campbell.

“We continue to update the content,” advised Pocock. “While U2 dealt with some rather obvious US-centric issues on the American leg, the EU is a big focus in Europe and so it’s a great moment when the blue, starred flag appears.”

The American leg was also notable for the show opening with exclusive content delivered to smartphone users via a clever Augmented Reality app. As fascinating as it was, the idea was scrapped when Treatment completely reworked the intro for Europe. Leading with pulsing visuals of an MRI brain scan, Charlie Chaplin’s final speech from the 1940 movie The Great Dictator is cut with devastating scenes of war-torn European cities, provoking a moment of hushed reverence.

For the first two-thirds of The Blackout, the band are inside the Barricage but remain unseen. Instead, they are represented by distorted shadows, pre-filmed as an illusionary precursor to the big reveal. Lights Of Home uses the physicality of the screen rather than being a video medium. Likewise, while the screen isn’t performing miracles on Cedarwood Road, the band does interact with the cage itself, with Bono walking along the catwalk as an illustrated street scene rolls past him.

In Act Two, the band appear on the E-stage whose LED content adds another dimension with an adaptation of Run Wrake’s 2005 illustrations for Vertigo, psychedelic imagery for Even Better Than The Real Thing and a simple moon in You’re The Best Thing About Me that morphs into the sun for Summer Of Love.

City Of Blinding Lights features The Edge’s daughter Sian Evans on-screen along with content that is updated on an almost daily basis by touring animator Brandon Kraemer. He explained: “With songs like City, I’m gathering material that is specific to the city we are playing and the lead times for this are often very short. In Lights Of Home, we show a custom particle map that evolves into a night image of the city taken from the International Space Station. It’s an obvious crowd pleaser when fans recognise their home town.”

CREATIVE CUT The big change amongst U2’s video crew is the introduction of Video Director Matt Askem who, at the recommendation of Jon Shrimpton, took over from Stefaan ‘Smasher’ Desmedt in March. Askem is juggling feeds from 12 at his Grass Valley Karrera S-Series switcher. He said: “My preference is for manually operated cameras and I’m mostly reliant on eight of them with Grass Valley LDX-80 heads and a selection of lenses, but there are also Panasonic robocams and a selection of small cameras that can be put in odd places if necessary.

PRG’s video department is carrying a small warehouse of accessories, including a tower cam and a Furio remote dolly, reported Askem. “I’m spoilt because these are expensive items that aren’t found on most tours. The Furio dolly runs along the runway as Bono is walking and the camera head is very high so it’s tracking his eyeline all the time, allowing him to ‘play’ to it.”

Lighting Director, Mark ‘Sparky’ Risk and Willie Williams; Video Crew Chief, Stuart Heaney; Video Engineer Jim Toten; disguise Operator, Colleen Wittenberg and Video Director, Matt Askem.

Adjacent to Askem at FOH, Colleen Wittenberg handles the programming of the disguise gx2 media server and content triggering. Askem said: “I’m concentrating on directing and cutting the camera feeds and the IMAG at the east and west ends where I have to deliver a show to those who can’t see the Barricage. That’s the reason why, at crucial times, the IMAG screens will show a composite mix of content and camera images. “Being blessed with very knowledgeable technical people like [Video Engineer] Jim Toten, [Video Crew Chief] Stuart Heaney and Colleen means I can focus on the creative aspects of directing.”

At showtime, Jim Toten assumes position behind his fader rack to effect real-time correction of all the cameras before reaching Askem’s switcher. He also records every gig on Telestream Lightspeed multichannel units that are in line with an AJA Video Helo system. As the band leave in their getaway cars, they are handed a H.264 format recording on SD cards to review at their convenience.

Toten elaborated: “U2 are incredibly diligent about watching each show to see how they can improve on it. They get to see wide views, a programme TX and a camera we call ‘B-Follow’ which is dedicated to Bono and also used as a reference for his wardrobe people. Another bonus is that I can provide recordings to order for the press and the U2.com team.”

FIREPOWER It’s not unusual for Willie Williams’ ambitious design schemes to present their own challenges. “As always with lighting, I tend to shoot myself in the foot!” he laughed. “There are some parts of the show that are so hard to light, notably when they are inside the Barricage.” The answer to his dilemma was PRG’s hybrid Bad Boy and Best Boy spot which – along with Philips Nitro strobes – present all the firepower needed to activate a powerful light show even under these conditions.

Williams’ other major assets include Lighting Director Mark ‘Sparky’ Risk, who explained the approach to lighting the band when they appear within the Barricage. He said: “The solution is all about using the shutter facility on Best Boys to keep the light off the actual physical structure of the video screen. In some songs the band are in a set position where I’ll have a couple of lights on them with the shutters down. Other songs will just need a general wash. The rest of the job is then about balancing the colour and intensity with the screen content. If you get that wrong, a lot of the show’s meaning could be lost.”

Piloting the show from an MA Lighting grandMA2 full-size console, Sparky’s main workhorses amount to 32 Bad Boys, 121 Best Boy Spots (including 18 assigned as followspots), 120 Nitro 510 white LED strobes and 42 of the 510-C RGB models, positioned on towers on the stage periphery and within the Barricage.

As well 45 dimming channels of understage lighting, 77 custom LED fluorescent tubes were created as part of Tait’s broad package. They are featured in numerous ways: on the stage and runway, and at the bottom of the screen to create the illusion of an underpass. The tubes first appear horizontally on I Will Follow, the start of the band’s ‘punk club’ set. Fastforwarding to near the end of the show, the magnificent City Of Blinding Lights sees an additional set of tubes with pastel gels descend to form a random horizontal and vertical matrix.

To reinforce the disco-themed video content on the E-stage, Even Better Than The Real Thing makes a feature of a mirrorball surrounded by a Taitmanufactured LED ring. “The LEDs are programmed to chase with an ’80s flavour,” said Risk. “It’s brilliant that we only use this once – U2 understand the value of a momentary impact.”

Over the course of the project, Williams assisted with the design of PRG’s GroundControl remote followspot system, arguably the biggest recent development in show lighting. “PRG has continued to develop it such that a single unit can now run 4 different [Best Boy] spots,” Williams commented. “Alex Murphy is directing the spots and communicating with his 10 backstage operators, but you can have spot locations wherever you want them and you’re not paying for an big team.”

Historically, Williams and the band have their ‘What next?’ conversations before a U2 tour finishes. At the end of the massive 360°,

Above: PRG’s Mark O’Herlihy; Ric Lipson and creative contributor, Morleigh Steinberg with the LED light bulb used for the song There Is A Light; Jake Berry and his production office team.

Bono stated a wish to begin the next tour under a single light bulb. “That’s where the idea of featuring the light bulb in There Is A Light came from,” he said, referencing the emotional climax to the show when the singer removes an oversized polycarbonate resin LED bulb from a model of his childhood home and cradles it.

Said Lipson: “Taking it out of the house was something I came up with one day. The house is effectively a black Plexiglass lightbox with line artwork that only becomes visible when the bulb is switched on. Everything about the light bulb is custom made including a complex LED core that was designed to produce a specific colour.”

SOUND DESIGN A vast chunk of U2’s luxurious tour brochure is dedicated to the man who, for the last 40 years, has nurtured the band’s live sound. Sporting the most famous beard in concert touring, Cork native Joe O’Herlihy had just come to the end of a long period as Rory Gallagher’s engineer and was planning to concentrate on his PA rental business when he met the iconic foursome on 30 September 1978 at the Arcadia Ballroom in Cork. A future beckoned.

“They were barely capable of playing their instruments,” remembered ‘Joe O’, “but there was a certain spark and Edge’s guitar sound was key to that. Our relationship was founded on a mutual respect and it’s been a tremendous journey.”

One event from that journey has left Poppa Joe with a golden memory. “We were touring the US in ’87 and the band booked me a seat on Concorde so I’d get home in time for the birth of my daughter Louise. What U2 did for me is worth its weight in gold,” he said, adding that it’s rewarding to have Sarah, his other daughter, on the road as assistant to Tour Manager Scott Casey, as well as regularly seeing son Mark from the PRG video camp. “And when my wife Marian comes out to join us, she’s affectionately known as ‘Tour Mum’.”

With U2’s production designs being so visually-led, a recurring question has been “Where do we put the PA?”. This debate has driven O’Herlihy and his friends at Clair Global – U2’s live sound partner since 1983 – to devise all manner of bright ideas, not least when negotiating PopMart, 360° and last year’s Joshua Tree, which relied on Stageco’s cantilevers for optimum PA placement.

For 2018, the scale of the Barricage dictated a 15.8m trim height for the PA and this in turn encouraged the choice of Clair’s latest product, Cohesion CO-10, which was designed specifically for this application, joining the CO-12 and CO-8 in the flagship series.

“Our arena sound has been designed to be omnipresent, immersive in its very even coverage and highly intelligible,” claimed O’Herlihy. “Given the show’s multiple zones, we couldn’t entertain a conventional system layout, so we hang our speaker arrays off a curved rectangular grid above the Barricage, surrounding the central hockey dasher that’s found in most arenas. With cross-pattern referencing, we needed cabinets with a distribution degree that was different to the i-5 we have previously used, and the CO-12’s 120° dispersion was perfect.”

A stereo image is spread across 12 vertical arrays of 12 CO-12’s that are positioned equidistantly, and complemented by eight hangs of three Cohesion CP-218 subs. “Bass steering is all-important in arenas but it’s pivotal with this design. The solution was to put CP-218’s in the air and employ the cardioid method to avoid bass spillage on to the stage.”

The system also includes 32 CO-10’s as down fills and centre fills above the front of the I-stage, the Barricage, the runway and E-stage, while 18 CO-8 front fills are aligned at stage level to maximise quality on the arena floor. In total, 100 Lab.gruppen PLM 20,000k 44+ amplifiers with internal Lake processing drive the Cohesion system and 4 Lab.gruppen LM44’s process the self-powered CP-218 subs.

A DiGiCo SHOWCASE Tracking down O’Herlihy’s FOH position wasn’t as simple as one might expect. It fact, he was stationed way up in the balcony, side on to the Barricage – an odd place for show control but one would be hard pushed to suggest a better position. “Theoretically, we could be anywhere but we get a perfect stereo image here,” he said, making reference to close companions Jo Ravitch (long-time cohort and senior FOH systems engineer), Joel Merrill (Clair Crew Chief & Assistant Systems Engineer) and Brandon Schuette (Pro Tools / System Engineer).

MacPHISTO RETURNS

Bono’s contrary alter-ego MacPhisto, the secret love child of Lucifer, Batman’s Joker and Weimer cabaret goddess Anita Berber, makes a comeback on this tour after a 25-year absence. Referenced during the interval’s ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me’ graphic novel film, the antagonistic MacPhisto comes to life in Act Two, reminding us that “it’s when you don’t believe I exist that I do my best work”.

Wearing a top hat, the singer is made up for this part of the show and addresses the audience through a customised iPad device that acts as a mirror. Picking up Bono’s image, the camera is ‘hijacked’ by facial recognition software that sends a grotesque version to the big screen via Apple TV.

Ric Lipson explained: “We’re currently on the fourth generation of the mirror. Gavin Friday and I teamed up with a guy who designed a recognition filter for Facebook to create an older, grungier and more sinister MacPhisto. It took a while to get it to the point where it didn’t appear hokey and persistence paid off because the effect can be pretty alarming.”

The face of Zoo TV, MacPhisto is Bono’s vehicle for preaching the polar opposite of his own beliefs. Keeping up with current affairs, the script changes every day with Bono feigning an eccentric English luvvie accent. “On-stage, it’s as if Bono is seeing MacPhisto’s reflection in the mirror,” said Matt Askem. “After ‘Acrobat’, we shoot over his shoulder as he removes his make-up and the evil gradually dissolves.”

Bono’s contrary alter-ego MacPhisto, making a comeback on this tour after a 25-year absence.

It’s up here in the gods that 2 of 8 – yes, 8! – DiGiCo SD7’s are under Joe O’s control. Another 3 live in monitor world; 2 assigned to a private rehearsal room that is set up at each venue, and the other is a floating spare. Our man presides over 118 input channels and insists there is zero duplication.

“The second desk to my right,” gestured O’Herlihy, “is a mirror image of the one I’m running during the show. We have instantly recallable snapshots of over 100 U2 songs programmed in and all the settings are identical on both consoles. If a bucket of beer suddenly drenches my desk, I can go straight to the back-up and continue. It’s one of the redundancy measures that are in place across all departments and we’re well protected.”

He continued: “The SD7 is extremely creative; the EQ in the console is very transparent so I get to where I need to be fairly quickly. And while the onboard dynamic processing is up to date, I have more of a ‘vintage’ approach with my choice of outboard devices, like Summit DCL200’s and Lexicon PCM70’s. There are 2 Manley Vox Boxes in the rack, primarily for Bono’s vocal, and the Avalon 737SPs I use for Edge’s vocal is really a onestop solution for de-essing, compression and EQ. Then I have Lexicon 480Ls and TC 2290’s which are my bulletproof reverbs and delays.”

This brings us neatly to the vocal mic choices and despite this microcosm of reinvention, Bono’s preference remains a Shure SM58A. The latest incarnation of Edge’s hybrid headset mic uses a black Shure Beta54 capsule within the frame of a Crown CM-311A. Sennheiser, Shure, AKG and Audio-Technica mics are placed on the 3 drum kits, and while other standard models prevail, the DPA 4088 miniature mic fitted to Bono’s EUbranded bullhorn is noteworthy.

INTO THE UNDERWORLD U2’s crew boasts many vibrant characters but few are as colourful as Stage Manager Rocko Reedy, a musician in his own right whose band Rocko & The Devils opened for his bosses in 2006. A road warrior whose 44 years of touring tales beg a future autobiography, Reedy was a consultant on the classic movie This Is Spinal Tap. “I was on the Styx crew on a late-’70s European tour when [the producers] followed us around and took notes,” said the U2 mainstay.

“You know that scene when they get lost and can’t find the stage? That actually happened to Styx. Well, it’s no coincidence that one of my jobs on arrival at each gig is to stick yellow tape arrows on the floor every 20 steps from the dressing room to the stage, to safely guide everyone in and out.”

Reedy’s duties include overseeing the stage’s underworld and the ‘secret’ route that takes the band from A to B, or in this case, I to E. “We take them under the stage into what we call the ‘Rabbit Hole’ and then lay them down on carts that we roll into place on track decks. The magician doesn’t want to let the audience know how he saws the lady in half, so certain things happen very discreetly.”

Never knowingly under-equipped, the underworld houses three monitor systems – one on which Alastair McMillan prepares Bono’s mix, one for The Edge (Richard Rainey) and a third manned by C.J. Eriksson that is shared by Adam and Larry. These are connected by the mic inputs that go into an transformer isolated splitter with three sets of the outputs sent to DiGiCo’s 96kHz SD-Racks. “We’re handling 170 inputs down here,” announced Niall Slevin, Senior Monitor Systems Engineer and RF tech, “and Anne Butt, our ‘Grand Mistress Patch’, is the reason all this works!”

Although monitor world has been gradually evolving towards fully internal dynamic processing, some outboard devices continue to be favoured. Edge’s mix has 3 Summit EQs that are run in line to reduce latency; a Smart compressor is applied to Adam’s mix and Bono’s vocal is treated with Bricasti Design M7 reverb.

Slevin explained: “Bono’s vocal processing is completely analogue with zero latency from the mic to his ears. When we originally embraced digital, sample rates were much lower and we had trouble settling the vocal down because of the latency, so we’ve since gone through several different approaches. Currently, when the signal comes in, the first thing it hits is a pair of old Neve channel EQ/mic pre-amps. That output runs in line with a distressor for compression and the output from that goes to two channels of an SSL X-Desk. At this point, the mix carries a little latency but the vocals are analogue straight through, and the output is combined through a TC 1128 graphic EQ prior to sending them to Bono’s ears.”

The band use JH ear moulds – JH-16s for Bono, Larry and Adam, and the Roxanne model for Edge – with Sennheiser SR2050 transmitters. Also in the wireless department, Shure Axient is deployed for Bono’s vocals while UR4s cover Edge’s vocal and the Beta 98 on Larry’s marching snare. Due to the amount of system redundancy, between 54 and 64 frequencies are licensed for each venue.

The underworld is also responsible for the multitrack recording of each show on a 96kHz system housed within Diablo Digital’s EXIII 128, which interfaces with a Mac Mini. Custom designed as a simple plug and play solution, the EXIII 128 provides I/O capabilities for 128 tracks of MADI on Pro Tools. Each monitor engineer records with one of these systems to provide the band with specific reference files of each show.

TRAGEDY RELIVED IN 360° SOUND

A specific requirement of U2’s 2018 audio design was for it to be fully capable of delivering surround sound from up to 12 independent source locations. Occasionally, the net effect is overwhelming especially when, at the end of ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, the audience is taken back to Dublin in May 1974, when 33 civilians were tragically killed in a series of rush-hour car bomb attacks.

Apprehension fills the air as lone saloon car appears on-screen and a ‘sonic theatre’ montage gathers pace, enveloping the crowd. Leading with the 6pm report by RTÉ newsreader Caroline Erskine, the roving soundscape builds to include a backdrop of contemporary songs as Mullen Jr stands alone on the runway, slowly thrashing his military snare until, finally, the brutal sound of an almighty explosion shocks the audience into silence.

It’s a brave and chilling way to make a point but one can only imagine how this will be received at Manchester Arena in mid-October, when the 2017 bombing is so fresh in the memory.

Up at FOH, Brandon Schuette manages playback, a lot of effort goes into this 90-second sequence. His rack includes 2 SSL XLogic Delta-Links that connect to an Autograph Signature series XMAD-1 switcher via MADI. The switcher output then goes to the RME MADI converter that interfaces with the DDM4R within the FOH SD7 Optocore loop.

Schuette explained: “Joe O picks up all 12 tracks from the Pro Tools session as individual channels on his SD7 that are then matrixed back into the PA. Therefore, ‘Track 1’ in Pro Tools will correspond to ‘Hang 1’ of the PA, and so we achieve a true 12.1 surround effect.”

Joe O’Herlihy added: “Gavin Friday and Carl Glanville created that incredible montage, and its harsh sense of reality is a compelling example of what can be done with surround sound in an arena context.”

Above: Niall Slevin, Senior Monitor Systems Engineer and RF tech with Anne Butt; The U2 audio crew; FOH Engineer Joe O’Herlihy; Stage Manager Rocko Reedy.

REFLECTION Around 2 hours before the second Paris show got underway, Eat Your Hearts Out’s catering area became swamped as backline world’s Dallas Schoo enthused about The Edge’s newest gear and Celtic rock legend Barry Devlin discussed his temporary gig as a creative assistant.

The band’s pioneering architect Mark Fisher and tour manager Dennis Sheehan may now be gone but their presence continues to be felt. They would be rightly proud of this latest saga – one that is far from over. Partly to avoid boredom and remain current, the show is a constant work-inprogress and plans are afoot to replace a large portion of Act One.

“As we intend to film the last show in Berlin [13 November 2018], we don’t want anything that was in the 2015 show,” Williams revealed. “So the band have been shaping up alternative numbers while we’re programming. Most bands would do that during their production rehearsal period whereas these guys are happy to carry on.”

Not for the first time, one ponders on how U2 could possibly follow this latest tour. Does Williams have anything up his sleeve yet? “Of course… it would be rude not to!” he said, flashing a knowing smile. “There are 3 ideas in the bag. They are now off the tracks in terms of what a band should be doing and that is immensely liberating for all of us.” TPi Photos: Danny North, Mark Cunningham, Remy/U2start.com, Stufish, Tait, PRG www.U2.com www.taittowers.com www.clairglobal.com www.prg.com www.stufish.com www.treatmentstudio.com www.soundmoves.com www.beatthestreet.net www.transamtrucking.com www.eventsafetyshop.co.uk www.diablodigital.com

In this month’s PSA column (Pg.106) find out how a tour of this scale handles stringent health and safety demands…