ADLIB supplied sound and lighting equipment to several stages and performance areas at Radio One's 2009 One Big Weekend Event staged in Lydiard House & Park, Swindon, Wiltshire, UK. The 2-day event kicked off the Festival Season in style with a line up including Snow Patrol, Kasabian, The Prodigy, Lily Allen, Dizzee Rascall with Calvin Harris, The Wombats and many more.
This year the ADLIB team - co-ordinated by Dave Jones - supplied sound to the second "In New Music We Trust" stage; the "Introducing" Stage for up and coming new talent; The Headroom Tent, a live broadcast interview station for artists participating in the event; the Live Lounge Acoustic Stage; and the Switch Stage which was upstairs on an open top double decker bus! Lighting was designed and supplied for the Introducing Stage by ADLIB Lighting.
It's the third year that the Liverpool based sound and lighting rental company has been working on this high profile event, with 2009 seeing their largest involvement yet.
In New Music We trust
ADLIB made its One Big Weekend debut at Preston back in 2007, supplying audio to just this stage. This year INMWT sound was fine tuned by crew chief Marc Peers who ran the stage and patch with Kenny Perrin on monitors, working alongside Craig Pryde at FOH and Michael Flaherty.
An impressive line up included Basement Jaxx, Doves, Maximo Park, The Enemy, Enter Shikari, etc. They needed a system that really kicked ass, so ADLIB went for a flown JBL VerTec rig. Onstage monitoring was L-Acoustics side fills and ADLIB MP3 wedges, with 2 dV-subs for drum fills. ADLIB also supplied a full mics-and-stands package to cater for all line ups and backline possibilities.
The consoles were two Midas Heritages, each complete with a comprehensive effects rack package, and the system was EQ'd and processed using the standard ADLIB set up of Dolby Lake with remote wireless tablet.
Introducing
This stage is a hot showcase for up-and-coming new talent and "ones to watch", and the PA in here was a ground stacked Nexo Alpha system, with the Yamaha M7 CL FOH console also used to run the monitor system. This consisted of 6 ADLIB MP3 wedges and a drum fill.
ADLIB's Otto Kroyman and Laura Davis ran this stage, working alongside their colleagues Tim Spilman and Rob Lister from ADLIB Lighting.
ADLIB's lighting design was expedient and highly effective, based on 4 upright bars of 4 upstage pre-rigged trussing, fully loaded with PARs in open white, with 2 upright bars of 6 pars either side at the front for a front wash.
Four bars of ACLs were positioned horizontally on the upright trusses and vertically on the two offstage uprights - 2 bars in each location.
The moving lights were 4 Martin Professional MAC550s side hung on the uprights, with another 2 on the front of the stage for audience effects. There were also 6 MAC 250 Washes, 4 on the top of the uprights and 2 on the front sides of the stage for cross lighting.
All lighting was run from an Avolites Pearl Expert lighting desk.
Live Lounge
The Live Lounge sounds were delivered by an ADLIB FD2 system - one mid-high pack and one sub a side, together with a Yamaha LS9 32 channel digital desk and 8 ADLIB wedges. ADLIB also supplied risers and staging, Jay Smith to engineer and run everything.
Headroom
Over in Headroom, the set up was very straightforward, ADLIB provided 2 speakers on stands, a 16 channel Allen & Heath mix Wizard desk, plus two Pioneer CDJ1000 CD decks and a DJ mixer - all babysat by Kenny Kristiansen.
Switch
For Switch - a new OBW concept - audio was another FD2 system, double the size of the Live Lounge one, with 2 mid-highs and 2 subs a side ground stacked on the floor either side of the bus. There were 6 ADLIB wedges for monitors and a 32-channel Yamaha LS9 console for control, all overseen by George Puttock and Carlos Herreros.
All went very smoothly for ADLIB, with Dave Jones commenting, "Good preparation and planning is the key to this type of event - with its extremely tight schedules and turnarounds - running efficiently and well. As always with ADLIB shows, everyone worked hard and also enjoyed being part of the unique atmosphere of the event and experiencing some excellent music".