Live At Leeds - Yorkshire Triumphs With City Centre Festival

With almost 400 festivals taking place annually in the UK, it can be a lengthy task for music fans to decide where to spend their time and money. If camping is strictly not on your agenda, there are still plenty of options when it comes to seeing multiple bands over the course of a weekend. We leave the tent behind and dive ear first into the alternative festival spirit.
   Bringing April to a close and greeting the festival season with a warm welcome, Leeds became the go-to destination for music en masse with the arrival of Live At Leeds festival.
   Founded in 2007 by festival director Colin Oliver, the initial aim for Live At Leeds was to create a showcase of local, musical produce in celebration of the city’s 100th anniversary. Despite a lot of other events being planned within the arts, there was a notable gap in which one forward-thinking company could truly spotlight the rich wealth of musical activity Leeds does offer.
    Over the last few years, the festival has grown in both popularity and production requirements. This year, around 120 bands played in over 10 city centre venues including the Cockpit, Holy Trinity Church, Leeds Met and the Leeds O2 Academy, placing the Yorkshire location on the festival map months before the legendary Leeds Festival occurs in the region’s countryside outskirts.
    The concept behind LAL is down to booking and promotional company Futuresound. Simon Stevens took on the task of partially coordinating the event, where the Saturday schedule boasted an impressive line up. Stevens said: “It doesn’t take place in typical festival grounds, so we assign a rep to each venue, someone that knows it well and who also knows how the festival works. We haven’t, in the entire history of the event, ever had any security issues.”
    As with a festival of any size, coordinating the programming, marketing and staffing can be problematic, but Stevens described the set up as “a small outfit who are incredibly supportive of one another; planning a festival can be tough at times and it helps massively if your colleagues are friends as well.”

DEVELOPING
The event has really developed in the last few years, becoming a relevant part of the UK’s annual festival programme. This year saw further success as advance tickets sales proved. Stevens added: “We sold a great deal following the first wave of bands being announced, which was extremely reassuring!”
   The attendance is growing each year. 2011 saw over 1,000 band members and road crew, 400 strong media and almost 5,000 music fans congregate.
    Headliners this year included local bands Pulled Apart By Horses, and hotly-tipped Blacklisters, alongside the likes of Anna Calvi, The Young Knives, Glasvegas and The Whip from further afield. Stevens has even set his sights on Scandinavian electronic pioneer Fever Ray as a dream booking for the 2012 event: “She would be amazing... an artist who sees live performance as an opportunity to explore all aspects of their music in the live arena that you can’t do on record, is ideal.”
    TPi’s focus for LAL lands on the recently refurbished O2 Academy. It’s the biggest venue from this year’s programme and with great attendance, proved to be, within a massive live schedule, a scene worthy of attention.
    Heading up the venue’s sound was FOH and monitor engineer Ean ‘Roon’ Rooney, who when not touring, is the O2’s in-house sound guy. Having joined the venue in 2008 after being invited by tech manager Greg ‘Lexicon’ McKay to attend a Soundcraft  Vi6 training day, Roon demonstrated clear passion for the job, and was soon asked to open for The Kaiser Chiefs.
    Both FOH and monitors had Vi6 consoles, during the festival and by Roon’s own admission, it’s a trusted tool: “I’m very comfortable using the Vi6; I think I could program it blindfold if I had to! If I could spec any board, it would still be an xl4/h3000.”
    Although not averse to using analogue outboards, there is a clear reason for going digital, “The advantages of a digital desk are evident if you are doing more than one band in a day; total recall. For FOH, I love the interface and sound of the Digico SD7. I love being able to have so much control over every channel and buss, and being able to move things on the fly is great.
   “I particularly like having the option to have a multiband compressor/de-esser over each vocal. For monitors, it has to be a Vi6 as first choice; it’s so quick to grab anything you need in regards to graphics, and the layout of 24 in/16 out as a standard page is just awesome!  The O2 also carries a 48way analogue multicore, although every Vi6 has a 64 input stagebox, it also has the option of 32 outs.”
    The venue has the sound zoned by Soundweb London, but it’s not used to process any audio apart from putting a delay time on the delay feed which then passes the signal to the relevant amps.  For processing and control, Roon used the matrix busses on the desk to process the sound over several different zones, as well as using the matrix outputs for returns to the stage.
    With a good mix of genres to contend with, and quick changeovers between different vocal specs, Roon was only required to use the onboard lexicon effects of the Vi6, mixing four different reverbs and a subtle splash of delay.
    Artists to grace the stage at the O2 Academy over the weekend included Scottish indie stars Frightened Rabbit, post-dubstep composer James Blake, alt-rockers The Duke Spirit and Saint Savior (ex-Groove Armada) who Roon personally engineered. He was also working at LAL to teach the touring sound engineers how to use the Vi6 console.
    He continued: “James Blake’s engineer brought in outboard delays and processing consisting of Boss Re-20 and Drawmer 201 for vocal FX, which create gated delay lines.” And Saint Saviour, Roon revealed to be a fun sound to mix: “I got to really drive the FX for that ‘Kate Bush’ effect on the vocals.“ And, although sets were not recorded during LAL, Protools are the engineer’s “definite multitracker of choice.”
 
ATTENTION TO DETAIL
Efficiency and attention to detail are both really important for events such as Live At Leeds where music fans are very keen to get involved with as much live music as they possibly can fit into 72 hours. Every stage setting they come across has to be enticing and welcoming enough to make them want to plough through the busy crowds and stick around.
    Only two bands soundchecked at the O2 Academy on a hectic day two of the festival, James Blake and Frightened Rabbit who used a combination of in-house mics, and personal kits. James Blake used Shure B91, B52, SM57S, B57AS, SM58S, B58S, and Frightened Rabbit’s mic package included Sennheiser’s 602 and 604, and an AKG D112 and 451. Yet there’s one mic, which Roon holds in highest regard, “I usually supplement any kit with my own Heil PR48 on Kik. I just love using that mic with any band!”
     The system used on the day was a d&b J series installed by Adlib. The matrix is configured with a main hang on the left of three of d&b’s J8 and two J12 and four J-Subs (two on the floor below hangs and two beside, under the stage), which is mirrored on the right.
     As well as renowned sound quality, the O2 in Leeds is known for the balcony area, with both seated and standing room leading to great views of the stage. The stage spec is completed by two more J8 and a J12 on both the left and right side with two Adlib AA1214 infills.
    The delays and supplements are four Adlib 2 x15’ subs and various top/midrange enclosures to give extra coverage around the building. The venue has been carefully thought out so that the feed goes to dedicated sound systems in the dressing rooms, offices and even the toilets!
    A month before the festival took place, aptly named LD Jason Truss was booked to design and operate the lighting design for the 02 Academy during LAL.
    He said: “The design process took its usual course of checking out the bands, discussing artistic concepts such as colour themes with the promoter’s rep and discussing technical capabilities with the venue. This was interesting because the bands in the line up varied massively in size, style and energy during their sets. The lighting design would have to keep up throughout the day of performances because the stage lighting could range from accentuating a solo pianist, through to traditional, louder rock bands, before soaring into energetic dubstep.”
    The biggest challenge, admitted Truss, was James Blake: “It’s not the biggest venue but the stage is still big enough to loose a lone performer in the darkness if you get it wrong. I was very conscious that the constant movement of the backline, drum riser and wedges could quickly re-define the performing area of the stage thus pushing the artist into partial, unwanted darkness. “
     The compromise had to be quick as at the same time, avoiding washing out the stage with widely focussed key lighting, was not an option.
    In solution, by combining a backlight provided by a broad saturated PAR wash with specials provided by the 575 zooms, the design enabled the artistic highlighting of the tight performance areas without washing out the remaining areas of the stage.

INTIMATE
On the day however, lighting was mainly designed to remain Intimate. “The way I see it,” said Truss, “the biggest selling point of LAL - the ability to walk in and out of all the venues as you wish - is also one of the biggest challenges for the production team; we need to entice people in by the scenes we set. You may not even know the band playing, but if it looks great and the atmosphere is inviting, people won’t simply walk.”
    While the O2 Academy certainly isn’t an arena, it does have a capacity of over 2,000, so making the audience feel as close to the bands as possible for occasions like LAL, played a vital role. The truss used was a four by six bar PAR64 (US truss).
     Said Truss: “It provided a decent stage wash for the slower numbers as well as chases for upbeat sections.” Also on board was eight Robe ColorSpot 700E AT (mid truss) that provided gobo washes, high angled backlighting, specials and great flash spots for the fast-pasted songs. 8x Robe ColorWash 575 AT Zoom (four mid and four DS trusses), which provided specials and colour washes, occasionally adding to a flashy centrepiece.            Additional key lights were eight S4 Junior (DS truss), four 8cell Molefay (DS truss) and a Look Solutions Unique 2 Hazer.
     Truss continued: “Moving head and LED technology is extremely capable and these fixtures certainly have their place on stage, but PAR cans have such a distinctive and iconic look and feel, that I don’t think they can be accurately replicated by anything else (yet!).”
    One of the strengths of the 700 spot, said Truss, is the quality of the beam control: “The gobo wheels, animation wheel, prism, iris and zoom are smooth, reliable and subtle, offering the degree of control required to create those intimate moments while still being able to pull out rapidly to keep up as the music changes direction. They really were ideal for this lighting design.”
    The lighting control desk used was an Avolites Pearl Expert, running Titan. “The programming and operation style of the Pearl make it my go to desk when I need that extra bit of flexibility,” Truss commented.
    Undoubtedly returning for a bigger, brighter 2012, with the possible addition of Leeds’ Millennium Square as an outdoor venue, the festival’s attendance could potentially increase by a further 6,000 punters.
     Stevens said with confidence and enthusiam: “Nearly doubling the festival capacity and using that space would be very interesting to incorporate. In terms of the event production, it would change the festival dramatically and make the event a lot more labour-intensive.”
TPi

Photos: Dan Heaton,
Bart Pertman, Danny Payne, Carl Fleischerand Ben Statham
www.liveatleeds.com