PORTISHEAD

Never a band to court the conventional or the deliberately popular, Portishead — Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons and Adrian Utley — have nevertheless sustained an ardent following. Patient, too, are their followers. The band’s latest album, Third, has been eight years in the making. It may have been a long wait but by all measures it has been well worth it.

    Challenging in that stylistically it’s a big departure from their last offering, the new album is still recognisably Portishead, if for nothing other than Beth Gibbons’ distinct plaintive vocal sound. Third is, to coin a phrase offered by the Daily Telegraph, “characterised by industrial noise and twitching interference”.

    Damned by faint praise, you might think? But no, the national newspaper critics and music press alike have been wholehearted in their admiration of Third. Released on April 28, it immediately appeared in the album charts at number two — no mean achievement in the same week Madonna released her latest.

    Part of that success was presaged by a well-timed pre-release UK mini tour. And with the band’s penchant for arcane retro instrumentation it was completed with what some might consider a retro approach to creating their sound live.

    The tour was serviced by Wigwam and TPi spoke to FOH sound engineer Rik Dowding and system technician Rob Collett after their London show at Carling Academy Brixton on April 17.

    “Rob has done a fantastic job for me throughout this tour,” said Dowding. “His knowledge of the system and the venues is exhaustive; it has been a real indulgence for me to sit back and let him weave his magic.”

    For a big cinema auditorium, Collett elected a fairly slim rig by point source standards: a two wide, seven deep array of d&b audiotechnik’s C4 loudspeaker system, but as he explained the rationale behind it, you begin to see why.

    “The C4 system covered the balcony perfectly, and the open part of the floor. We did have ground stacks to reach in beneath the balcony, but not too much, just one C4-TOP and a C7 loudspeaker for in fill. This is pretty much how we’ve done it for the whole tour.

    “The key is Beth’s vocal; she has a quiet voice at times whereas the music is a driving force. Hence, I couldn’t set too much on stage, plus you get a more even coverage flown. But we fly an extra centre vocal system as well, in this instance d&b’s small Q1 line array loudspeaker, with the very wide 110° horizontal Q10 box at the bottom, and that works perfectly. We also put Beth’s voice through the band system, but it means it’s far easier for Rik to place Beth’s vocal on top of that big band sound. It worked beautifully.”

    Choosing a point source system rather than a line array was not a decision arrived at lightly, as Dowding explained. “It was quite scary to start with. I had only used a d&b system with Skan PA and that was some time ago. We did a couple of shows in Minehead before Christmas using a Martin F1 system, which was OK — the Sub was extraordinary, it really rattled my eyeballs. But it was not the right system for the vocals, and that is fundamental to this band.”

    Other live experiences in the lead-up to the main tour proved equally unsatisfactory, so Dowding took the logical step and consulted Eddie Mulrainey who had engineered for the band 10 years ago when they’d last toured extensively.

    “I called Eddie out in Dubai where he is now based. Although I’ve been with Portishead for eight years I’ve spent most of that time in Geoff’s studio with them; my touring experience in that time had been fairly limited. Eddie looked at the itinerary and immediately advised a point source system, the C4 loudspeaker system specifically, and arranged for me to spend two days at Wigwam just before we did some TV and radio events. I spent the whole time with Rob who was to be my system tech and right hand man.”

    Mulrainey uses Collett for his 3db work in Dubai and specifically recommended him and Alex Hadjigeorgiou, Wigwam’s ‘king of digital desks’. “Both were fantastic and gave me a lot of confidence in Eddie’s choice,” said Dowding. “I really liked the family vibe there, and Chris Hill, what a lovely chap, just what we needed for this tour. The drum tech, keyboard tech and monitor engineer were with the band 10 years ago — that is the vibe they’d had back then, so they really appreciated the family ethos reflected by Wigwam.”

    Despite his familiarity with the system, Collett’s first day wasn’t easy. “Rob arrived at the first rehearsal not knowing the new material and it is quite a departure from the old stuff. His initial reaction to the drum sound we were getting was not good. But once I’d explained the desire to achieve exactly the Portishead sound, and where it sat in the rest of their music he understood immediately.

    “The drum sound is really ‘bonky’, but that’s what Geoff had wanted in the studio. Geoff is a big fan of mid-frequency sound — we were not aiming for a full top and bottom crisp drum sound — so Rob had to unlearn certain things for this tour!

    “The concept of using the centre cluster was a life saver, and even though Beth sings up a lot more than she used to, it still made my life a lot easier.

    “We used the same mic she had 10 years ago, a Crown Differoid CM Series, which was chosen at the time for its excellent feedback rejection. We used it again now, though we did try some others, but the CM still proved best for her characteristic vocal sound. We then put it through an Avalon 737, a much warmer sound than through the head amp of the desk.”

‘OLD’ DIGITAL
If Beth Gibbons’ vocal is a signature element of the Portishead sound, then so too is the need for authenticity in the band sound. Dowding mixed from a Yamaha PM5D, but also had the first-ever Yamaha digital board, the DMP7 in the rack.

    “It was chosen for its 8-bit sound — all eight channels of drums were run into it for a touch of square wave EQ, then returned to the desk,” explained Collett. “It’s an old piece of ’80s technology and Wigwam went someway to secure two back-up DMP7s for us to carry as spares.”

    Dowding agreed: “It’s the sound of the album. For example, during the show we use five differently tuned snares, each song has a different DMP drum EQ, that’s all about authenticity.”

    Naturally, Dowding set the DMP to be triggered via MIDI off the PM5D. “The PM5D is an easy desk for me to work with. Each song requires different instruments and sonic treatment so the scene recall allows me to control this effortlessly. I’m fortunate in that I’ve got a great bunch of musicians to work with and they have already created and effected the sound I need.

    “Most of the effects are outboard; space echos, spring reverbs. I did use a bit of large hall reverb from the desk, and that’s actually very good, but dynamics wise I’m consciously trying to avoid recreating the more compressed sound of recorded material, and allowing the full dynamic of a live performance to emerge.”

    With the centre cluster replicating the musical theatre style of presentation, band/vocals in the stereo rig, extra vocals at centre, further control was demanded to make this configuration effective. Collett took charge of this role, again using Yamaha technology.

    “I had a DME64 mix engine; Rik sent me a band mix, a Beth mix, and then using a tablet interface to the DME I could mix to the PA. It meant I could place Beth’s vocals exactly where needed, moderating emphasis in the different areas to reflect the music that underpinned it. We also had a Neve Pure Path on the back of it to really smooth the signal.”

    Dowding, along with the Brixton audience, obviously had a whale of a time. “Overall, the system worked really well, and Rob was an absolute star. The great thing about using the C4 is the ability to increase power to the top row of the flown hang, as a discrete zone, to improve delivery to the back of big balconies like those at Hammersmith and Brixton. I thought the system was fantastic for its musicality; it gave me the ability, and the necessary headroom, to achieve the band sound.

    “It is a system that gels well together, even when ground stacked. In fact, in some environments the ground stack proved the better option, Wolverhampton Civic for example where it sounded fantastic. Doing shows at the gigs around Bristol, I’m used to sound systems that are physically in your face. When I heard the C4 flown at the first show in Oporto I missed that a bit, partly due to the acoustics. Then we went to Lisbon and Rob changed the rig slightly to address that issue and I thought wow, that’s exactly how I want this band to sound.

    “With Portishead, you need to get the drums in the right place, that’s the glue that binds them. I’ve got a great calibre of musician up there on stage so really in some ways I don’t have that hard a job. But you’ve got to be able to glue it all together, and that is where the PA has helped me so much.”

    The one thing that really stands out from this tale is the fact that Portishead have chosen a system from the last millennium — is this indicative of a move back to point source systems?

    We asked Chris Hill at Wigwam, who said: “We’ve gone from a holding of about 200 stacks of C4 down to 70 over the last few years. But curiously since we dropped to that level, demand for them has been sustained; we bought another 48 stacks at the beginning of the year. The purchase was mainly to replace old stock with new, but in fact in the last two to three years demand seems to be rising again.

    “We always like to give our customers what they want. Portishead sounded great, a breath of fresh air. We may be buying some more.”

    The UK shows have drawn to a close, but Dowding’s adventures in live sound continue apace. After Brixton, the band played a stunning set at California’s Coachella festival with a line array system, encouraging the sound team to take d&b’s J-Series line array option for their larger-scale European dates.
TPi
www.wigwamacoustics.co.uk • www.dbaudio.com