ADLIB's Audio division continued its touring success in the dance / dub step sector, supplying sound equipment and crew for the recent sold-out Professor Green spring UK tour – the popular UK rapper's first carrying a full production.
ADLIB and Professor Green's paths have crossed numerous times since the MOBO, MTV Europe & NME award-winner exploded onto the scene in summer 2010 with his debut album ‘Alive Till I'm Dead'.
This tour has really cemented the ‘live' relationship with the artist following ADLIB's work on 2011's ‘At Your Inconvenience' tour.
Production Manager Trigger asked ADLIB on board, with Front-of-house engineer Pat Tunbridge requesting an L-Acoustics V-DOSC rig with a Midas Pro6 as his mixing desk of choice, following a great experience with it in Australia and Monitor engineer Ben Kingman chose to mix using a trusty Yamaha PM5D.
The tour started with rehearsals in London, then moved onto Dublin and Glasgow building up to a spectacular finale at Brixton Academy – enthusiastically appreciated by Professor Green's exuberant fan-base.
ADLIB's team was led by systems engineers James Neale and Michael Flaherty, looking after FOH and monitors respectively.
The FOH arrays at the largest venues comprised 10 x V-DOSC cabinets a-side and 3 x dV-DOSC downs, together with 8 x SB28 subs a-side ground stacked for a proper bass-tastic Professor Green vibe.
In addition to these 3 x ARCs cabinets a-side provided front fill at Brixton and 2 x L-Acoustics Karas were positioned along the front of stage.
All this was controlled via one of ADLIB's standard Lake processing racks, made up from LM26s and LM44s with new wireless Motion Computing J3500 tablets, supplied by Rugged Mobile. These are running Adlib's bespoke Windows 7 disk image which simplifies management of multiple computers and enables all machines to be easily upgraded to the same standard or reset to Adlib's factory settings complete with the full suite of live software.
The main system was driven with L-Acoustics' LA8 amplifiers.
The Midas PRO6 was a real winner and impressed everyone.
James Neale first used one to mix monitors for an Ellie Goulding show and has been a firm fan ever since. He also visited Midas prior to the Professor Green tour going out to thoroughly familiarise himself with the console's advanced features. He says, “I think it's the best sounding digital board I've used to date”, adding that it has that ‘fabulous Midas sound', together with excellent build quality and flexible, stable software.
Tunbridge used a selection of outboards as well as all the on-board effects, including a Lexicon PCM91 reverb, a TC 2290 delay and Manley Vox Boxes for the vocals. ADLIB supplied a KT 9696 hard disk recorder for the PRO6 to record the Brixton show for a webcast.
Everything onstage was kept in check by ADLIB's Michael Flaherty. All the kit was spec'd by Ben Kingman, who chose a PM5D console with the upcoming summer festival tour in mind. As one of the most ubiquitous mixing desks on the planet, there is a high possibility he will be able to get one pretty much everywhere in the world and be able to simply transfer his show file!
Other than that, ADLIB supplied eight channels of Sennheiser G3 wireless IEMs for the band and the guest vocalists, plus three ADLIB MP3 wedges, driven by PLM 10,000Qs. With the Dolby Lake processing on-board, these can easily be tweaked using a remote tablet.
The sidefills were 2 x ARCs cabinets and 2 x SB28s a-side and the drummer had a thumper seat plus a pair of hard-wired Shure P4 IEMs.
The backing vocalists used Sennheiser G3 Series radio mics – a 945 and a 935 and Professor Green himself a Shure UHFR mic with a Heil capsule , chosen for its tight polar patterning and excellent feedback control.
The DJ had a pair of ADLIB MP4 subs and 2 x MP3 wedges at his disposal, again run off PLM 10,000Qs.
ADLIB Account Manager Phil Kielty states, “Watching Professor Green, the band and the crew develop as a live performance over the last two years has been an absolute thrill for us. I've seen them many times at festivals, and for ADLIB to be involved on this tour was a real privilege.”
Kielty's many highlights included a completely crazy Glasgow crowd chanting “Here We Go” before Professor Green took to the stage. He comments, “Moments like that make you realise the huge power and absolute magic of live music, even in tough economic times like these”.
For more press info. on ADLIB, please contact Louise Stickland on +44 (0)1865 202679 or +44 (0)7831 329888, or Email ‘[email protected]', Contact ADLIB direct on +44 (0)151 486 2214 or check www.adlibsolutions.co.uk
Photo Credit: Anna M Weber