ROSKILDE: DOING IT THE DANISH WAY

From its humble beginnings in 1971, a fledgling festival was taken over in 1972 by the Roskilde Foundation, which has since run the festival as a non-profit organisation for development and support of music, culture, and humanism. The festival continued to grow to become one of Europe’s largest and most prestigious contemporary live events.

But as with many success stories, it has been a rollercoaster ride, which dipped to an all-time low in 2000, when nine fans died in front of the main stage in a crowd crush amidst muddy conditions during Pearl Jam’s performance.

There were many factors that contributed to the accident that have been investigated and documented, which we won’t go over again in this article. Rather, TPi visited the 2008 Roskilde Festival to discover how the festival has not only continued, but flourished through a cathartic overhaul at all levels.

Across the site near Copenhagen, this year’s varied programme included The Chemical Brothers, Neil Young, Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine, Jay-Z, Gnarls Barkley, Duffy, The Cult, Kings Of Leon, Cat Power, The Streets, Judas Priest and the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra.

Roskilde Festival manager Henrik Bondo Nielsen has worked at the festival since 1980, when he started out as a volunteer garbage collector. By 1998, he had become festival manager and has played a key role in introducing the many safety improvements that have taken place since 2000.

Perhaps the festival’s biggest contribution to crowd safety has been the development of a barrier system which divides the audience into pens — an idea that was launched in 2001 and which has developed into today’s ‘four pen’ design.

“After the accident in 2000 we met experts throughout Europe to discuss ways of preventing anything like that happening again.” said Bondo Nielsen. “These included The Security Company in Holland, Mojo Barriers and Showsec’s Mick Upton and with the support of the international festival community we introduced a lot of initiatives focused on peoples experiences and well being at our festival. We also tried hard to ensure we maintained the unique spirit of the Roskilde Festival has stayed at the core of the event.”

Immediately visible changes that evolved from these discussions included a new stage with video wings to give a better visual experience to prevent the audience crushing forward to gain better views; an improved PA, and the audience’s division into the four separate pens, with a total capacity of 4,000, preventing large crowd surges and controlling the numbers of people in the front of stage areas.

Additionally, audiences now have to queue separately for each main stage band and leave the pens once the act has finished, carefully controlling the audience’s ingress and egress from the main live music arena.

“This way we have easy access to the audience, keep crowd density at a sensible level and each pen can be individually evacuated,” Bondo Nielsen commented. “A new refinement in 2008 was the inclusion of a disabled users’ platform inside the barrier.”

In conjunction with the local fire brigade, the festival also installed a system to film the opening of the festival so that organisers could monitor the amount of people entering.

As well as infrastructure investment, there has also been an emphasis on training teams. “The 25,000 volunteers each work a total of 24 hours in shifts over the four-day festival,” said Bondo Nielsen.

“We have trained our volunteers for many years. Since 2001 we instructed in crowd safety together with the business school. For the first time, this year, we have organised or trained the volunteers off-duty in welcoming the audience when we open the gates.”

Underpinning these developments are good relations with the local authorities and emergency services, which have seen a co-ordinated approach to safety.

“Words like risk assessment and documentation used to be rare in Denmark but now they are common practice,” remarked Bondo Nielsen. “We’ve had a good relationship with the local authority since 2000, creating a network with all the emergency services. We have produced a Danish version of ‘The Purple Guide’, bringing organisers closer to the authorities and raising the profile of health and safety.”

Since 2001, Mojo Barriers chairman Patrick Jordan has worked closely with the organisers to develop the barrier configuration in front of the main ‘orange’ stage creating a very safe area for fans.

He explained: “There is a great health and safety culture at Roskilde. The pen system means that security can control numbers in front of the stage, be very close to the audience for monitoring and recovery, and the barriers obviously break any big surges.”

Leon van der Velden was Mojo Barriers project manager — he arrived on site on the Tuesday before the event with three other Mojo Barriers crew. With the help of 20 local volunteer crew they installed over 1,000 metres of aluminium Mojo Barriers.

“There were quite a lot of special pieces due to the unusual configuration of the barrier system employed at Roskilde,” said van der Velden, “so it was essential that we were well organised at both ends — in terms of loading the equipment in De Meern, Holland, and then the through the sequence for building, although we’d allowed plenty of time to construct this unique system and get it tested and wired up with the Barrier Load Monitor System (BLMS).

“Initial readings on-site showed no alarming crowd pressure peaks, with Slayer’s fans giving the highest readings still within acceptable limits. We checked the barriers every morning for any movement but they were fine through-out the festival.”

As well as the barriers, Mojo supplied its proprietary Line-Up Gate system to enable Roskilde’s unique entry system for festival fans. Following each performance fans were totally cleared from the four pens in front of the main stage and the two pens on the second stage, with Mojo Line-Up Gates controlling the flow rate into all of the pens and giving the security staff an effective monitoring system.

Steen Bechmann, head of security and health & safety at Roskilde, explained how the system was been developed for 2008. “Every year we make changes,” he explained, “and this year we added the Line-Up Gates to control the ingress. We had up to 230 volunteers looking after the gates and the front of stage area.

“All our security staff have taken a six-lesson course to make sure they are competent and can treat the audience to the Roskilde experience. They learn the site layout, emergency procedures and the support procedures that we put in place.

“For our Health & Safety workers, the focus is on them and the audience looking after each other. So they are integrated into the audience and will encourage fans to be aware of each other’s health. Health & Safety is a stand-alone department of the festival, running medical systems and emergency teams.”

Site technical manager Paul Jensen explained further: “On the stages, production hardware has helped make the festival safer and more spectacular over the years. The introduction of screens and delays several years ago meant there was less pressure to get to the front to enjoy the experience.”

SOUND
Danish rental firm DPA Soundco A/S once again provided concert sound services for the legendary festival, giving a Roskilde debut to 60 JBL VT4889 full-size line array elements, suspended using ground-support trussing structures which flanked the festival’s unique, orange tensile membrane outdoor stage covering.

Each main left/right array included 18 VT4889s, supplemented with out-fill array hangs of 12 boxes each. DPA Soundco’s Paul Hammann and Claus Pedersen headed the on-site crew responsible for system deployment and operation. “This is the first year we have deployed JBL’s VerTec system here, after using another system [Turbosound] for many years,” advised Sten Jensen of DPA Soundco.

“The large VerTec system went up very quickly. We relied on JBL’s new V4 DSP presets and found that we did not have to use very much EQ on the system. The long-throw capabilities were as expected, so some additional delay arrays that had been provided on towers at 50m out from the stage were more to bring in some additional high-frequency energy than for providing any additional output power, as there was a constant headwind of up to 8m-12m per second.”

JBL VT4888 mid-size line array elements were used to cover areas close to the stage. “The front fill system that we had designed for the event worked well for the audience pits in the middle, intended for a throw out to about 25m from the stage,” explained Jensen. “Each year we make gradual adjustments and improvements to the overall sound system, and we already have ideas for refining our approach for next year.”

Jensen noted that the sound crew and guest engineers were very pleased with the overall results. “We were especially happy with summation of the main and the offstage Vertec array hangs. And, we were able to get perforated net in front of the offstage speakers (rather than solid plastic) so this was a help,” he observed. “All in all we were pleased with the performance of the system. We think that VerTec will experience a second wave of interest and excitement in the industry, with JBL’s new V4 DSP presets.”

Roskilde’s Paul Jensen stated that the festival “self-monitors” and after consultation with incoming sound engineers they set all maximum stage levels at the desk at 103db.

This, Henrik Rasmussen, MD of Roskilde, pointed out, is all part of the festival’s ethos. “We’ve started supplying ear plugs to the audience if they want them — it stimulates awareness amongst young people to look after their ears. We’ve made a moral statement about our obligation to the audience. If they feel it’s too loud they can pop them in! It’s like 1968 again — look after yourself and each other!”

SYSTEM POWER
Amplification for this Orange stage PA system came in the form of 34 Lab.gruppen Powered Loudspeaker Management (PLM) 10000Q devices, which each ran two VerTec loudspeakers. All of the PLMs were run on AES for the main signal and on analogue for redundancy.

The low end was handled by 24 Nexo CD 18 subs per side, powered by 24 Lab.gruppen fP6400 amps, while the Martin Audio delay system was driven by Lab.gruppen FP+ Series FP 10000Qs and FP 13000s.

DPA Soundco’s technical guru, Gorm Jakobsen, is already a fan of the new units: “We’ve always had Lab.gruppen amplifiers in the warehouse at DPA, but the new PLMs definitely take amplifier and processor technology to a new level.

“We tested them extensively on other festivals before putting them on Roskilde, and the results were astonishing. We asked everyone who used them to drive them as hard as possible, and we adjusted the settings accordingly, trimming them back each time so that by the time we arrived at Roskilde we had the perfect settings.

“Our Vertec system has never sounded so good, and yet the PLMs were only running at 50% of their maximum temperature, even for bands like Slayer who test any system to its limits.

“Technically speaking, the PLMs are a dream to work with out in the field,” continued Jakobsen, citing their performance monitoring and load verification capabilities as being particularly noteworthy.

“You know exactly how each unit is performing at any given time. I particularly like the limiter settings found in the ISVPL [Inter-Sample Voltage Peak Limiter] which allows you to tailor each power output to the load connected to it, and then control it.

“What’s more, it automatically detects any voltage peaks in the signal and reduces the gain accordingly — very clever!

“I also like the fact that the PLM can be any type of amplifier you want it to be, and in fact, several amplifiers at once. You simply configure each channel to handle whatever load is dictated by the loudspeaker and away you go..”

Jakobsen added a final word on sound quality: “The PLM’s performance as an amplifier is irreproachable, but there is no doubt that the marriage between Dolby Lake and Lab.gruppen has produced a sound quality that really is a cut above everything else.

“We mustn’t forget that PLM isn’t just an amplifier, it’s a networkable loudspeaker processor. The Dolby Lake crossover that is part of the processing package is an extremely high quality crossover, and the difference it makes to the system is audible. It sounds noticeably better than other industry standard outboard crossovers that we have used in the past.

“It’s fair to say that as a result of all the advances in technology offered by PLM, you spend more time in the warehouse for the initial system set-up than you would using a traditional amplifier, but the recompense is that you gain a huge amount of time on site, not to mention the savings in rack space, weight and the improvements in sound quality.

“In my opinion, PLM is a perfect live sound tool, and I’m sure I’ve only just scratched the surface of its true capacity — I’m looking forward to learning what else it has to offer.”

FRINGE ATTRACTION
Away from the live music action at Roskilde, one of the many fringe attractions was a mobile cinema, equipped with Electro-Voice sound systems.

Equipped with the most modern components and a 60m2 screen, the cinema was housed in a marquee with seats for over 700 movie fans.

In terms of its Dolby Surround audio performance quality, this ‘travelling picture show’ was perfectly capable of holding its own with the most modern big city multiplexes.

Credit for this is due to the Danish rental company Jespers Rejsebiograf and the Herlev-based cinema sound specialist Kinovox. Ib Sigismund, a product specialist with Kinovox, summed up the challenge: “We were not dealing with a normal cinema auditorium here but with a tent, and yet we needed homogeneous coverage and optimal intelligibility. Clearly the equipment used had a crucial role to play.”

After careful analysis, the team of experts drawn from Jespers Rejsebiograf and Kinovox favoured Electro-Voice systems, specifically 15 EV XLE line-array tops (five each left, centre and right), eight EV ZX5 loudspeakers and two XDS sub-woofers from the X-Array series.

LIGHTING & VIDEO
The lighting production and design was handled and supplied by top Danish company Seelite A/S. Its rig for the main Orange stage featured 452 Thomas PAR 64s,14 3kW Atomic strobes, 43 Martin MAC 700s and 34 Vari*Lite VL500s.

For audience lighting, 168 ACLs, 40 2kW blinders and 72 VL5s were positioned in the FOH and delay towers. Follow spots at FOH were four Robert Juliat Cyrano 2.5kW HMIs plus two at stage left and stage right. Two High End F100s provided smoke effects.

Control came in the form of an Avo Diamond 1 (for conventionals) and a Whole Hog III with Wing (moving lights). To aid on-site programming, the festival management provided a full WYSIWYG system backstage with a Whole Hog III desk and Catalyst server.

Sweden’s Massteknik supplied left/right configurations of Lighthouse R16 LED screen — each were 50m2 in 16:9 format. STV of Denmark handled the TV production.

CULTIVATING SKILLS
Roskilde once again supported the South African Roadies Association (SARA) by inviting four SARA technicians to spend two weeks engaged in on-the-job training at the festival as part of a technical skills enhancement project.

The technicians — Lerato Mokoena, Kedibone Mabale, Sibusiso Mathebula and Naledi Makhetha — earned their places afterexcelling in the SARA localised training programs.

Each of them embarked on 13 days of intensive work experience, gaining technical training from some of the best craftsmen in the world to acquire top-notch skills development in sound, lighting, staging and live production techniques.

In closing, Henrik Rasmussen commented: “Roskilde has always enjoyed a good proportion of international visitors [in some years making up 50% of the 80,000 strong crowd]. I think that”s because we place our audience at the centre of what we’re doing.

“From the moment they arrive on the camp sites on the Sunday before the festival starts, through to getting a great line-up and creating an overall great festival experience — we call it the ‘orange feeling’!”

Now that’s what you call getting Tangoed!

TPi

BUCKS NEW UNIVERSITY TRIALS PRESSURE VEST AT ROSKILDE..
Roskilde was the chosen event for a primary field trial of the Bucks New University’s pressure suit which — in relevance to Mojo crowd safety barrier — conducted remote real time measurement of crowd pressure exerted on an audience member, positioned approximately in the fourth row, in the centre of the front of the stage during the headlining Radiohead appearance on the Orange stage.

From the results gained through the trial, there were a number of conclusions and empirical inferences that can be drawn:

1. Artists play a significant part in the pressure within the audience by the way in which the sequence of material is chosen for the event. An artist choosing a range of high energy and ballad type numbers in a sequence can control the activity and therefore the pressure generated in the audience.

2. The audience, after their initial logistical nervousness, find a level of activity which is fairly stable during a significant part of a concert.

3. The audience tire towards the end of a show which appears to reduce the pressure.

4. There were signals in the audience that related to activities which reduced or increased the pressure on a person in the crowd. If these excitations can be controlled then there is every reason to assume that the pressure in the audience could to some extent be controlled.

The crowd pressure measurement team — pictured above, L-R: Professor Chris Kemp, Dr. Tim Coole, Will Dart (wearing the vest), Professor Geoff Lawday and Dr. Peter Harding — and Bucks New University would like to thank the organisers of the Roskilde Festival for their hospitality, help and advice before and during the field trial.