International News

GLASTONBURY, England – Pigeon Detectives kicked off their UK tour with tracks from their new album Emergency and, with XTA digital signal processing an integral part of WE Audio’s PA system, the band’s brand of indie-pop sounded better than ever. Comprising a comprehensive number of Turbosound cabinets at both FOH and monitors, and with an array of XTA DSP units sitting across the system, the performance of WE’s system has not failed to impress the Pigeon’s engineers.

ALAJUELA, Costa Rica – For the Imperial Festival, La Florida wanted to add another brand to their large inventory of staging, lighting and audio equipment. After a great deal of discussions, Adamson’s Latin-American distributors, La Florida, settled with Adamson, acquiring 16 Y18s, four Y10s, six T21 Subs and four Adamson Touring panels. Sound pressure and clarity were cited as the winning factors of the Y-Axis System.

GERMANY – German dance act, Scooter, whose first album release in the UK since 2002 promptly knocked Madonna off the number one slot last month, has just completed a tour throughout Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Their latest tour, “Jumping All Over The World” was a high-energy techno extravaganza. Czech rental company, RentalPro, supplied full audio, lighting, laser, video and staging equipment, including two Innovason Sy48 digital mixing consoles equipped with an LX6464ES soundcard. 

PORTUGAL – Void Acoustics undertook an unusual installation in Portugal, involving a club in a tunnel. Porto's newly opened GARE Club features an all-Void system, installed by T2 Produção e Eventos, designed to deliver an exciting, high-impact sound throughout the club.   The club's main room occupies a 35-meter tunnel, with a ceiling height of 10 meters and 6 meters wide, with the system incorporating Void's the triple-horn Air Motion speakers, as well as the Stasys 8 dual 18" horn loaded enclosures.  

BRASILIA, Brazil – Adamson’s SpekTrix system was recently installed in the intimate space of Espaço Brazil Telecom Theatre, located in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. The newly opened theatre, which is located in the Brasilia Alvorada Hotel, promises a continuous line-up of performances including music, theatre, literary workshops and lectures. Marc Systems was contracted for the lighting and sound design, which on the sound side included four SpekTrix enclosures, two SpekTrix W and two SpekTrix subs. 

PARIS – The French Open, one of the most prestigious international tennis events, is in full swing. Traditionally, the toughest games always take place on the red clay of Paris, as clay courts are significantly slower than hard court surfaces. In order to provide the right audio backdrop for broadcast, the Presteigne Charter Group, a prominent worldwide provider of broadcast rental equipment based in London, selected Lawo mixing consoles for this event. Certainly no cracking serves or balls skimming the edge of the net will be missed by TV viewers with these consoles handling audio.

MAIDSTONE, England – Since the long-running BBC Radio 1 Roadshow morphed into the One Big Weekend series of outdoor festival-style shows in 2000, the production values have progressively increased to a point where nothing less than the most cutting-edge audio systems are now acceptable. This year, four separate stages and thousands of music fans descended on Mote Park to enjoy a bill headlined by no less than Madonna herself. But more true to the traditional Roadshow ethos was the Outdoor Stage, which featured a range of DJ performances and a large Turbosound Aspect PA system.

BEIJING – DiGiCo UK has been selected to provide several DS-00 digital consoles to NBC during the network’s coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics from Beijing, China, beginning Aug. 8. The announcement was made by Dave Mazza, senior vice president Engineering, NBC Olympics, and James Gordon, DiGiCo managing director. The DiGiCo consoles will support NBC’s coverage of basketball, boxing and indoor volleyball.

MANCHESTER, England – The match for the world boxing championship in front of an audience of 55,000 was amplified by “Butterfly”, the line array by Outline of Brescia (Italy). The contestants were Mexico’s Juan Lazcano and England’s Ricky Hatton (the latter won, thus retaining his IBO light-welterweight title).

BUENOS AIRES –Buenos Aires Live Show (B.A.L.S.) deployed a large JBL VerTec system for Rod Stewart’s recent concert at Velez Sarsfield Stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The show was part of Rod Stewart’s current world tour supporting his latest release, “Still The Same…Great Rock Classics of our Time.”
 

LONDON – Björk’s current world tour uses some of the most cutting edge on-stage technology out there. Björk’s band includes Damian Taylor whose rig resembles the bridge of the Starship Enterprise and includes a Yamaha Tenori-on, which is displayed on large plasma screens to the wide-eyed crowds during the track “Who Is It?.” “Björk felt it would be cool to feature the gear,” says Damian, “ to make it part of the stage set rather than using abstract pre-recorded visuals and projections.”

DORTMUND, Germany – Promoter i-motion’s annual Mayday extravaganza draws clubbers from all over Germany to an all-night feast of cutting-edge music. This year’s event saw a new arena added to the event in Dortmund’s Westfalenhallen, which got off to the best possible start thanks to a large Turbosound audio rig.