IPSO FACTO: DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS?

When four highly attractive young women with model features command the respect of serious music critics, eyebrows start to twitch.

And when those very same ladies meld an original rock sound with an acute sense of style that — according to The Guardian — has influenced Yves Saint Laurent’s designers, it’s an irresistible and decidedly different combination.

By the time London-based quartet Ipso Facto appeared on stage in front of the industry’s greatest at the TPi Awards 2008 last February, they’d already packed a significant amount of achievement into a mere 10 months together, with support slots on tours by The Pixies’ Frank Black, Siousxie Sioux, The Charlatans, Klaxons and Yeasayer, a début single (‘Harmonise’ / ‘Balderdash’) and countless gushing reviews by the NME and Clash, et al.

Despite a number of offers, the band — chief songwriter Rosie Cunningham (lead vocals & guitar), Samantha Valentine (bass & BVs), Cherish Kaya (keyboards, melodica & BVs) and powerhouse drummer Victoria Smith — are yet to sign with a major label, but that hasn’t dampened the devotion of such publications as Vogue, Grazia, Artrocker, Diva, Disorder and copious other ‘über-cool’ ’zines, several of which have granted them cover status.

Since TPi’s big night at Grosvenor House, these darlings of the underground have been gathering momentum at summer festivals all over the UK and Europe, and most recently on tour with The Last Shadow Puppets, where their dark, ‘monochrome psychedelic’, Sixties underground sound — as showcased on single No.2, ‘Ears And Eyes’ — is gaining a larger fan base by the day.

Creating their music at Ipso Towers — their communal four-storey town house in south London... summoning up curious images of a post-modernist female Monkees — the girls have been supported by a growing range of production companies and crews over the last year. And in August, TPi had the chance to meet their ‘extended family’ during their appearances at the Underage Festival in London’s Victoria Park, the Reading & Leeds Festivals, the Get Loaded In The Park event on Clapham Common, and a number of warm-up dates with The Last Shadow Puppets, Arctic Monkey Alex Turner’s celebrated side project.

UNDERAGE FESTIVAL —
DOIN’ IT FOR THE KIDS
Produced by Ear To The Ground, Underage is one of several events under the wing of the Manchester and London-based company, which also manages Tribal Gathering, Gatecrasher, Dpercussion, The Big Chill and projects for Orange, Ministry of Sound, Virgin, O2 and Top Shop amongst many other clients.

Currently the UK’s only festival for under 18s, the second Underage event on August 8 drew an audience of 7,000 teenagers to Victoria Park in Hackney to watch a huge line-up of cutting edge bands including Dizzee Rascal, Gallows, Foals, Glasvegas, Bombay Bicycle Club, Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man, The Maccabees... and the Ipso girls.

With event manager Jon Drape, production manager Dan Craig, site manager Iain Mackie and artist liaison staff Sarah Carless and Gemma Stansfield forming the core management team, Ear To The Ground was responsible for managing all aspects of the festival including production, bars and catering, guest list/entry procedure and health and safety provision.

The whole team were back on site the following day to deliver the ‘adult version’ in the form of the critically acclaimed Field Day Festival.

The unique nature of the Underage event meant that increased levels of crowd management and audience welfare were introduced, with AP Security’s long-standing relationship with both Tower Hamlets Council and the local police making for a trouble-free festival.

AP had already worked on the Love Music Hate Racism and Lovebox Weekender in Victoria Park in the preceding weeks, but according to Chris Hollands, southern operations manager for AP, Underage was the busiest of them all.

“You have to keep an eye on them because spirits are so high. And they certainly keep us on our toes,” smiled Hollands. “They run from one stage to another as bands change, so we have to do the same! We work alongside the local authority and police, and the relationship we have built up is priceless. We have our two hourly meetings to discuss things, making sure everything is running smoothly.

“There were no event related injuries and no police incidents, which means we’ve done our job properly. Our staff love working there.”

Ear To The Ground directors Jon Drape and Steve Smith originally met at the Hacienda club during the height of the Madchester era. While Drape was the venue manager, Smith ran one of its many club nights. Embracing their common interests, the pair set up Ear To The Ground to design music events, but soon expanded into fashion and visual arts. In the last five years, the company has delivered international events throughout Europe, the USA and Asia, using a network of production suppliers.

W.E. Audio continued its role as main sound provider to Underage, following its involvement in last year’s début event. W.E.’s founder and main man, Wayne Barker received the call after forming an alliance with one of London’s top young promoters, Tom Baker of Eat Your Own Ears. Tom’s a very hip, up-and-coming guy, and I met him when the electro band Hot Chip were breaking,” said Barker. “Underage came about through Tom’s enthusiasm and was brought to fruition in partnership with Marcus Weedon.

“They learned a lot of hard lessons in their first year, such as what happens when you don’t have enough toilets on site! So for 2008, they brought in Jon from Ear To The Ground to head a new production team. As event manager, Jon has helped them through some key licensing issues, but that’s not taking anything away from Tom and Marcus who’ve done very well to bring this festival on to the circuit.”

As the festival’s title suggests, Underage is strictly for a 14-18 audience and the presence of parents is forbidden — however, through magical powers, a certain 45 year old editor did manage to make it through the production gate. Perhaps it was his youthful looks.

Did Barker find the teenage vibe intimidating? “It is a bit strange because it doesn’t seem to be one thing or the other at the moment. The whole Emo thing seems to have dissolved into a cross between ’60s retro and scruffy chic! But we treat the Underage concept with a lot of respect because this is the next adult audience, so we have to give them production values that encourage them to prioritise live music within their social lives. Above all, it’s nice to see kids go to their own festival and be treated courteously by security.”

The production infrastructure remained in place for the adult-orientated Field Day, which shared some of the acts, including Foals. “Last year we did this from stock with a single truck; we’re now up to four trucks and because there are seven stages instead of four this year, we’ve have had to sub-contract some gear, so it’s definitely growing,” said Barker.

As well as supplying the recording truck, W.E. handled four of the seven stages itself, including the main stage. For the Top Man stage, which featured Ipso Facto’s late afternoon performance, W.E. supplied Yamaha M7CL digital consoles at both ends of the multicore and Turbosound’s new Flex Array — the brand’s first step into line array territory.

A versatile, medium–scale system, Flex Array combines elements of Turbosound’s patented point source attributes with well proven line array technology. By simply changing the orientation of the cabinet, one enclosure type is capable of being used in either line array or point source configurations. The ability to rotate the mid/high waveguide within the enclosure gives additional flexibility of use from only one type of box.

“There are eight Flex Array elements and three 2 x 18” subs per side in the Top Man arena, with Turbo TFM-230 monitors, MC2 amplification and XTA processing,” explained Barker. “It’s the first time we’ve tried it and it’s a very loud box. I’m told that it’s based on the Polyhorn technology that they used in Aspect, and they had to develop that before they went ahead with a line array system.

“I’m really not a line array man but I appreciate it’s here to stay. Being very loyal to Turbosound, if there’s any line array I’d want to use, it would come out of their stable. I think I’ll give it a few more gigs before I form a definitive opinion, but we are looking at making a purchase, so it looks like this will be W.E. Audio’s first line array.

Over on the main (Converse Century) stage, W.E. assigned 24 MC2-powered stacks of Aspect, flown left/right, TFM-450 wedges and Midas Heritage 3000s at both ends. Barker manned the FOH position, ‘Stosh’ and Mark West on stage, and Guy ‘Yug’ Ebbs managing the backline and DJ kit hired from Matt Snowball. The NME stage also featured Aspect stacks and dual H3000s, with TFM-330 wedges.

The Domino and Music Space stages were run by the canny lads from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne’s Nitelites, as sub-contracted by Wayne Barker. Director Jamie Moore designed a Crown iTech 8000-powered JBL VerTec ground-stacked rig with Martin LE1500 wedges and DiGiCo D5 consoles for the Domino stage, and chose d&b C4 cabinets, Ohm monitors and a dual-purpose Allen & Heath ML500 to bring the Music Space stage alive.

For the smaller Red Bull Bedroom Jam stage and Habbo DJ tent, W.E. subbed in the services of Bill Wyman’ stage manager Dave South (previously of Concert Sound) who brought in Turbosound TQ-440s and EV wedges to form compact systems.

Four of W.E. Audio’s 20-strong crew came from Deep Blue Sound, Jim Parsons and Simon Honywill’s technology courses in Plymouth. Barker: “Some of them were interested in doing some practical summer work so we were happy to give them a chance to show what they can do. They’re liking the experience and I’ve been very impressed with how motivated they are.

“The thing about some of these courses is that they think they’re going to graduate and immediately mix The Rolling Stones. Hopefully, we’ve given them a taste of the real world... and that it hasn’t put them off! Seriously though, theory is fine but these kids need to gain some practical experience before they are genuinely useful to anyone.”

Haydn Cruickshank’s north London lighting company, Colour Sound Experiment, covered the entire site-wide lighting requirements for Underage/Field Day. Robert Davies headed a crew which featured Richard Gilson, Tony Wilson, Franki McDade, Sarah Payne, Charlie Russell and Craig McCleary, who took responsibility for one stage each.

Robe moving lights and Avolites desks were the order of the day in most areas at Victoria Park. For Ipso Facto’s Top Man arena show, Franki McDade (who had been with Colour Sound for a mere four months at this point), drove an Avo Pearl which controlled Robe ColorWash and ColorSpot 575ATs, Pixellines, Atomic strobes, 2-lite Molephays, and two bars of six PAR 64s — all hung on a 9m x 5m tower truss goal post and a 3m high curved rear truss.

Although it was easy to feel extremely ancient amongst such a young crowd, the atmosphere at Underage was warm and friendly throughout the day, benefiting from the organisation’s skilful and intuitive operation.

It’s fair to say, however, that the local authority, Tower Hamlets Council, were playing hard ball with the noise limits. Jim Griffiths from Vanguardia Consulting was on site to monitor levels and advised W.E. to curb the low end on a few occasions.

Wayne Barker commented: “It would have been great to give the kids a full-on festival experience in terms of powerful sound, which we did to a certain degree, and naturally I understand legislation as much as the next guy, but it would be really good if common sense at local council level was allowed to prevail sometimes.”

READING & LEEDS — TWIN PEAKS
For Ipso drummer Victoria Smith, her first visit to the Reading Festival was an auspicious moment: “I’ve never even been as a fan, so playing here is a little daunting but I’m starting to get into the spirit.”

Not quite at the stage where they can specify the colour of their M&Ms or insist on only the best Cristal, Ipso’s backstage frills can be fairly meagre. “We’re normally blessed with some crisps, nuts, water and four cans of beer between us,” laughed bassist Samantha, whose father, Hilton Valentine — as a member of The Animals — is credited with playing one of the world’s most instantly recognisable intros: the guitar arpeggio of ‘The House Of The Rising Sun’. “But everyone’s been very helpful with important stuff like the load-in so we can’t complain.”

Headlined over August Bank Holiday weekend by main-stagers Metallica, The Killers and Rage Against The Machine, the twinned Reading and Leeds Festivals have a history that can be traced back to 1961, when the National Jazz Festival was conceived by Harold Pendleton of the Marquee Group. By the time it had settled in Reading itself in the early ’70s, the festival had foresaken its jazz roots in favour of rock and blues.

Under the later guidance of the Mean Fiddler Group (now Festival Republic), increased demand for tickets at the end of the ’90s led to the addition of a twin site in Leeds, allowing acts to flip-flop in V Festival style between both on alternate days. This format has been in place since 1999, however, a big change this year was the advent of a new stage.

Curated by the likes of Radio 1 presenter Huw Stephens, the BBC Introducing stage brought a new stream of talent to major festival audiences this year. Already a hit at Glastonbury, Latitude and Radio 1’s One Big Weekend events, it made its début at Reading and Leeds, where Ipso Facto headlined a bill that included other hotly-tipped acts like Fox Cubs and Thomas Tantrum.

Ipso Facto were among the bands selected to be filmed by the BBC for TV broadcast and online viewing. “We’ve never even been filmed properly before, and that’s kind of scary!” said Rosie Cunningham, just minutes before the band hit the stage. “This time last year, we had only been a band for a couple of months so this is a very big deal for us.”

Mansfield-based ESS (Entertainment Sound Specialists) ran the sound for the BBC Introducing stages — as well as the Festival Republic and Alternative/Comedy stages — choosing to field Nexo Alpha E systems and monitors, along with a Yamaha LS9 digital console at each site, positioned at the stage right wing.

The LS9 had the dual role of mixing both FOH and monitor sound from this “awkward” location, but Ipso engineer Mark Scurr remained undeterred. He said: “It was one of those odd situations where I started with a basic mix and had to poke my head out occasionally to check if levels were OK. Hey, I’ve had worse!”

One of the more familiar faces backstage at Reading was audio guru Chris Beale — “My first Reading was in 1990 so I’m almostready for my gold watch!”

Over the course of those 18 years, Beale’s role has changed from that of audio supplier, with the SSE Audio Group, to chief specifier. “Since SSE and I parted company three or four years ago, and I set up CBA [Chris Beale Associates], I now specify the systems and bring in the suppliers — including SSE — as required across both sites,” said Beale.

“Vanguardia has the contract to carry out the noise management, although part of my business is the development of noise management and IT systems for use at festivals and events — a lot of that kit is here.”

For SSE and Canegreen, Reading and Leeds marked the first opportunity for the two merging companies to work in partnership. While the former looked after the sound for the main stages — with V-DOSC line arrays, Nexo CD18 subs and Heritage 3000 consoles — Canegreen provided the Radio 1/NME stages with Meyer Sound Milo/Mica systems, Digidesign Venue Profiles (FOH) and Yamaha PM5Ds (monitors). The Dance Lock-Up stage, meanwhile, saw Adlib Audio in the thick of the action.

“I never select a company based on the product they own; it’s more about their ability to provide the quality of service,” commented Beale. “My philosophy for Reading, Leeds, Glastonbury and many other shows is that once I’ve chosen the supplier, I then encourage to get the best out of them. From that point, I’m not worried about the brand of box they choose to use.

“Obviously, I don’t want anyone to start experimenting but providing they’re using a known quantity, I don’t particularly care if it’s V-DOSC, Meyer, Martin or whatever, as long as that supplier has faith in their investment.”

Reading/Leeds was yet another festival job for Colour Sound Experiment, who furnished the lighting for the BBC Introducing stages, both of which had a simple rock’n’roll rig of four bars of six PARs, controlled by Avolites Pearl 2008 desks.

As the BBC was filming the action on the Reading stage, eight Martin MAC 600 moving lights were added to spruce up the look. LD Franki McDade made another appearance for Ipso Facto at Leeds, and Sam Campbell ran the console at Reading.

Elsewhere at the twin-sited festival, Neg Earth lit the main stages, while Siyan provided all the lighting for the Radio 1/NME, Festival Republic and Alternative/Comedy stages.

GETTING LOADED IN CLAPHAM
In a similar vein to the weekend coupling of the Underage and Field Day events, Clapham Common’s Weekender saw the DJ-orientated South West Four rave on August 23 precede the following day’s Get Loaded In The Park.

While South West Four attracted such turntablists as Carl Cox, John Digweed and Armin Van Buuren, Get Loaded featured Iggy Pop & The Stooges, Supergrass, The Hives, Noah & The Whale and Ipso Facto, who drew a sizeable and enthusiastic crowd for their set in the XFM arena, which was headlined by Kate Nash.

Under the project management of Perry Wetherill and Steve Marley, and stewardship of crew chief John Ricketts, Peckham’s Systems Etc supplied lighting to every stage and sound to all but the main stage — a job handled by Britannia Row using a Turbosound Aspect system with Yamaha Tn5 amps driven with Dolby Lakes plus Waves.

As well as a FOH Heritage 3000 and a PM5D on monitors, Brit Row saw this event as an opportunity to put the new Midas Pro6 digital console through its paces at FOH with early afternoon band, The Holloways. Brit Row’s crew were Jimmy Nicholson, Colin Burrel, Dee Miller, Pawel Zakrzewski, Steve Donavon and Luke Chadwick.

Like its neighbouring stages, the XFM arena majored in Robe fixtures. Here, there were a number of Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash Zoom 575ATs, along with six-way lamp bars and Megastar strobes. These were controlled by Dave Amos, who programmed and operated an Avo Pearl 2008 desk.

Systems Etc’s choice of PA was an Electro-Voice XLC system with Nexo Alpha E sidefills and PS15 wedges. Paddy Matthews mixed monitors on a Yamaha M7CL console and for Ipso’s set, the band’s engineer Mark Scurr temporarily relieved FOH tech Gary Falkenthal of his duties at the Soundcraft Vi6.

Kate Perring and Richard Bagshaw, the creative duo otherwise known as Digital Insanity [www.digitalinsanity.co.uk], were behind the artistic and technical elements of the video production on all stages at Clapham. Having worked on the last few TPi Awards events, including the 2008 ceremony that featured Ipso Facto in a house band role, they were keen to design the video show for the girls’ set in the XFM arena.

Said Bagshaw: “We’ve been working on the Clapham Weekender for the last five years. It was started by Andrew Mantle at Lock’n’Load Events, in partnership with Heat, the hard house outfit, and Danny Newman from Turnmills. It won an award for New Festival of the Year in its first year and audiences have since grown enormously.”

With Creative Technology supplying video screens and crew under Steve Purkess’ project management, Digital Insanity’s involvement as the playback and content provider was site-wide. Its affiliation with Ipso Facto came as a direct result of the parties’ interaction at the TPi Awards 2008.

“Kate and I really like the band, and as we were all going to be together at Clapham, it seemed a good opportunity to come up with something a bit special for their performance,” commented Bagshaw. “So with plenty of notice and a reasonable budget, we were able to come up with something very distinctive.

“Ipso’s managers at Wing Management were able to supply various versions of the band’s logo, footage from their ‘Harmonise’ video and several stills to form a palette of material. Having seen them in the past and listened to their music, I thought that a scratchy, ‘film noir’ feel would suit them well, so I used a lot of the supplied material along with some pieces from our library, and mixed elements together randomly and energetically.”

Although Nigel Sadler of Green Hippo and Tom Etra cut the video mix for other artists playing the XFM arena, the pair — along with Gary Oldknow — assumed camera operator roles to document Ipso Facto’s set, while Bagshaw mixed the material shown on the 14m2 Barco D-Lite screen.

“For the last four years, we’ve never used anything other than Hippotizers for our media servers and they’ve never let us down. I use a simple MIDI controller to cue the Hippo layers.”

More than 80% of the content used by Digital Insanity is completely original, created in-house. “We’ll very occasionally use stock footage by I try hard not to,” said Kate Perring, whose ‘arty’ background has included years of experimentation with computers and photography. “I feel very uncomfortable about using material that everyone else has access to — it’s more about personal pride than anything else.

“Our methods of creation vary tremendously, from scanning and filming things, to generating textures on a computer. There’s really no limit to how you go about it. The big difference between this approach and going the stock route is that there’s a much more natural feel about original content, whereas if you choose some off the shelf material it invariably looks artificial.

“You also have to keep changing to stay fresh. If people see things on screens that they’ve seen before, their attention span gets shorter... and ultimately we get paid for keeping an audience focused and surprising them.”

Unusually for an outdoor event of this size, there was no I-Mag on any of the stages. “I think it comes down to budgets at the end of the day because we only had video on the main stage for the first year,” explained Bagshaw.

“Rather than introduce live camera I-Mag, the organisers decided to add video elsewhere to give a more interesting feel to other stages. It’s a much more functional approach than relying on bands to bring backdrops, and all they need to do is give us their logos or visual material ahead of the gig, or ask us to create something special for them.”

For the main stage, Creative Technology supplied a 24m2 Unitek 25mm LED screen, and a further Barco D-Lite system was installed into the Time Out/Together arena.

TPi Award-winning stage manager ‘GCB’ looked after the XFM arena and two other stages at Clapham, while Neil McDonald managed the main stage. GCB’s crew company, G Force, provided 22 personnel to all stages including several for McDonald.

ON THE SOAPBOX
Security for the Clapham site was managed by Secure-Ops. Sadly, we feel compelled to report that in more than 10 years of publishing, Total Production has never seen such a witless display amongst security staff as the one we experienced inside the XFM arena.

At least two staff were unable to comprehend plain English — leading to virtually zero communication at times — and the general attitude of the pit guards seemed to be designed to obstruct live entertainment rather than enable its smooth operation. The net result was an unnecessary amount of stress and time wasting caused to the band and their team.

GCB and Systems Etc’s Steve Marley were just two crew members who voiced their disgust at the confusion and obstruction caused by the behaviour of the Secure-Ops staff in question — a blot on what was otherwise a well-run event.

Despite several attempts throughout September to solicit an explanation from Secure-Ops, TPi was still awaiting a response at the time of going to press.

SUPPORTING THE PUPPETS...AND MORE
August ended with Ipso Facto’s appearance at the Offset Festival in Hainault Forest, headlined by the highly influential Gang Of Four and Wire.

In between the Victoria Park and Clapham dates, Ipso Facto took to the road as support on The Last Shadow Puppets’ tour, kicking off with warm-ups at Portsmouth Guildhall, Oxford New Theatre and the Olympia in Paris.

Touring with SSE on board, the two bands began their UK and European tour in earnest this month, which takes in such venues as the new Carling Academy Leeds, the Hammersmith and Manchester Apollos, Newcastle City Hall, Amsterdam’s Paradiso and Berlin’s Tempodrom.

With a new single, ‘Six And Three-Quarters’ / ‘Circle Of Fifths’, out this month on Mute Irregulars, complete with a cutting-edge promo video directed by Nicola Probert, Ipso Facto aim to complete their debut album by next spring to coincide with a planned visit to South By Southwest in the States. Are you ready, America?

TPi

Report & main photography by Mark Cunningham
Additional images by Masatoo Hirano
& Tim McCall

MARK SCURR:
A RISING ENGINEER’S TALE
“I went to Westminster College when I was 16 and enrolled in a City & Guilds sound engineering course. I joined FX Rentals when I was 17, making cables and pots of tea, and cleaning tape machines, and by the time I was 20 I found myself mixing gigs at FOH as a freelancer. So I’ve now been doing that for around five years, whilst also working for FX.

“I’ve been mixing Ipso Facto since April. I was mixing Hatcham Social, another of Wing Management’s bands, and that’s how the link was formed.

“Ipso Facto are a fascinating band to mix. I’ve mainly worked at indie clubs, so I’ve been used to very hard rocking, brash kind of sounds, but Ipso are a lot more subtle and an in-your-face approach to the mix just wouldn’t work. You’re not looking to rip the audience’s head off; you want to reinforce the graceful sound they already create.

“Even though they have a fairly basic instrumental line-up, the sound they make is quite orchestral, so lush reverbs and delays form part of the live audio make-up.

“We’re not at the stage where I’m touring with my own console, or any production for that matter, and we also don’t have a dedicated monitor engineer yet. So I’ll use whatever happens to be there at each gig, which means I’ve seen quite a few permutations of gear over the last few months.

“There’s always an element of learning involved, especially when I’m confronted with one of the newer digital desks. We did four consecutive nights recently and there was a different digital board at each. With very few exceptions, I’ve been helped out by headline bands’ engineers or rental companies’ system techs and it’s worked out fine.

“Touring as support to The Last Shadow Puppets, I’m blessed with a 96-channel Digidesign Venue Profile, as supplied by SSE, and it really is a fantastic desk to use once you get your head around it. Another console I love working on is the Soundcraft Vi6 which is so simple to use and the sound quality is spot on. At Reading, I used a Yamaha LS9 which, I have to say, didn’t really excite me but I made it work.

“Having played with so many different PAs now, I think that when Ipso Facto get to play their first headline tour, I’d have no hesitation in using a Nexo Geo T system. I’ve used that on a few shows and I’m really impressed with its beautiful clarity. It’s very easy to work with and its tonal character is perfectly suited to this band.

“Mind you, we’ve played through L-Acoustics’ V-DOSC and EAW line arrays on European festivals and they also sounded very good. Most of the time, of course, you don’t even get to see what the system is — you load in, get the band on stage, do the gig and go, and the PA’s normally hidden behind a scrim anyway!”

COMMENT:
SOUND FOUGHT THE LAW...
AND THE LAW WON
Wayne Barker wore his heart on his sleeve when, during our meeting at the Underage Festival, he waxed lyrical about his frustration with out-of-control political correctness, particularly it comes to the often heavy-handed policing of audio levels at live events.

His comments came two weeks before Festival Republic MD Melvin Benn (right) was forced to defend complaints by fans at Reading about the disappointingly quiet sound of some main stage performances.

Blaming the problems on the weather — which was actually pleasantly mild on the Friday — Benn explained: “The council set exactly the same level that they always set, but due to the weather this year, the sound stayed low. As a result, the sound hit those decibel readings much, much earlier than normal, resulting in the sound being recorded at much louder volumes offsite than normal. So we were obligated by the council to turn our levels down.

“The sound levels on-site are almost entirely dictated by the levels off-site. The local council set levels by which sound can’t be above and this is measured next to residential properties nearby to the site.”

This, of course, is not the first time that a council has played an obstructive role. If two things in life are certain, it’s that a) windy weather moves sound waves, and b) neighbours will always complain about noise, especially if they moved house close to Heathrow Airport or Reading Festival’s Richfield Avenue site, and didn’t put two and two together in advance.

There probably is a very workable middle ground that will appease audiences and council officials, however, while paranoia remains the biggest threat to common sense, this cul de sac will not be overcome. Until then, we’re left with a a diluted version of what a festival experience should be. Audiences spend good money to physically feel the sensation of being there, and if the musicians aren’t allowed to deliver, disconnection pervades, as The Killers’ disappointed drummer Ronnie Vannucci explained to the BBC.

“I don’t know what’s going on with these laws,” he said. “It’s a real sour feeling when you’re supposed to be sharing your sound with a whole bunch of people. You feel that the crowd knows that the amps aren’t turned on as loud as they could have been. It was the same thing when we played Glastonbury last year. It feels like when you’re playing, it’s not really touching anybody.”

Melvin Benn has said he is looking into the situation for Reading ’09. Shortly after this year’s festival, he commented: “I have a meeting scheduled with the council to present how we will overcome this so we don’t face the same issues next year.”

If we really all want a quiet life, in every sense, perhaps the way forward would be to adopt the ‘silent disco’ approach of putting sound directly into fans’ ears via head/earphones. But as a colleague reminded me (as if I needed reminding), outdoor festivals were never the best environments for enjoying sound. If fans are serious about wanting a more consistent, quality live audio experience then they’ll simply have to buy tickets for indoor gigs.

Mark Cunningham