Michael Eavis tends to make a habit of declaring every Glastonbury Festival "the best ever", and true to form he made that very claim after this June's event. Whilst the accuracy of that statement is debatable, it's more certain that Glastonbury 2003 was the best organised to date.
Attracting an estimated 136,500 revellers inside the now-famous fence, Glasto 2003 didn't feature its greatest-ever line-up of bands. Early rumours of the Stones and McCartney headlining came to nothing, although the top-form presence of Radiohead, REM and Moby made up for it - the latter covering 'Creep' at the Radiohead's request!
The most talked-about band of the event was The Darkness, those hilarious Spinal Tap-esque rockers who, if the novelty value is maintained, are likely to become THE festival attraction of 2004.
Glastonbury 2003 was notable for SSE Hire's takeover as audio supplier for the main Pyramid Stage, following Britannia Row's reign. However, it wasn't the first Glasto for SSE - the newly-relocated Midlands rental firm had previously provided the PA at the 1979 festival at the same time as Tony Andrews was developing his first Turbosound festival system at SSE's then Nottingham HQ.
As the PA company more associated with festivals than any other in the UK, did this feel like the icing on the cake for SSE's Chris Beale? "We were absolutely over the moon to be asked to supply sound for the Pyramid Stage this year," said Beale. "The decision to invite SSE was a leap of faith on the part of Michael Eavis, Dick Tee and Melvin Benn, especially as the contract had been held elsewhere for so many years. We'd like to thank them for their trust in us and for their kindness and hospitality during a truly wonderful event.
"There is no doubt that, as good as many other UK festivals are, the Pyramid at Glastonbury is the definitive festival sound stage and many commentators seem to regard the Pyramid supplier as the leading festival sound company irrespective of the work done at other events."
Beale chose to field the company's new Nexo GEO T line array, but admitted that the system design had given him a few sleepless nights after being offered the job. "I knew I had to balance the best possible coverage with a solution for the environmental problems that have sometimes bugged the festival over previous years.
"I opted for a five station main system comprising outer arrays of 24 GEO T 4805 cabinets and 12 CD-18 subs per side; in field arrays of 11 GEO T 4805s and nine S2 subs per side, and a centre downfill of six GEO T 4805s. There were no cabinets at ground level nor were there any other near-field in-fills. I added two delay positions each comprising eight GEO T 4805s at 125m downrange to replace high frequency loss due to air absorption. I calculated a result that I hoped for and was pleased to find that it exceeded my expectations. It's hard to glow too much about your own work, especially as the success depended upon so much input from other people, however, I consider the result to be spectacularly good. For such a new system the performance was outstanding and I honestly believe that we are part of a project that is going to re-define the standard for large scale sound systems. Certainly, anyone who wants to compare GEO T with small format line arrays from other manufacturers can simply forget it. GEO T is a formidable loudspeaker system."
What was the time-scale involved in set up prior to the first show day? "We loaded in on Wednesday morning although we had installed TeePee structures for the near-field and delay positions the day before. By Wednesday evening the system was fully installed and we had four hours to tune the system on Thursday before the festival commenced on Friday morning. In fact, the system filtering was very gentle and the grab equalisers on the consoles remained flat for almost every artist."
The whole system was Camco-powered and processing was by Nexo NX241 at the
amp racks, with XTA DP224 EQ and Out Board's TiMax digital matrix at FOH. Beale credited Out Board's Robin Whitaker and Dave Haydon for their support and help in developing the system configuration.
At FOH, XTA dynamics processing boosted the Heritage console facilities, and SSE also provided G2 gates, C2 compressors and D2 dynamic equalisation, all of which worked extremely well. Otherwise, the control system was 'SSE standard' with a Midas Heritage 3000 at FOH and Midas XL3 on monitors, although a DiGiCo D5 Live was set up at FOH as an option for any engineer who wished to take advantage of this cutting-edge technology.
Did the recent termination of SSE's distributorship of Innova Son consoles have anything to do with the presence of the DiGiCo D5? "To some extent, however, the D5 is much in demand and we are a hire company," commented Beale. "To ignore this product would be a bad move as we need to supply what our clients demand. The current range of Innova-Son consoles cannot compete on features with the D5, however, they are much less expensive to buy or hire and I see no conflict."
Beale continued: "We haven't ended our relationship with Innova-Son, in fact we recently added another Sy40 to our inventory and we remain pro dealers for the range. The reason Innova-Son has moved distribution to Sennheiser is that they felt, quite rightly, that SSE was not able to address markets such as broadcast and post production because of our focus on the live sound market.
"Sennheiser already distributes the products in the US and other territories so it was a natural choice to make. We have a great relationship with both Innova-Son and Sennheiser and we've co-operated completely with the move. SSE remains the place to hire or buy Innova-Son for pro audio."
SOUND ELSEWHERE
Liverpool-based rental firm Adlib Audio supplied 21 crew and sound equipment for five stages. Its largest system was on the Cabaret Stage - a Nexo Alpha system with six high, three bass and two sub enclosures a side, a Soundcraft Series Four console at FOH and a Soundcraft SM20 for monitors. This stage was run by a team led by Steve Cole and Tim Dalton.
Other stages serviced by Adlib were Theatre (Adlib FD2 system), Circus (Adlib FD2 with Allen & Heath GL3300 consoles), Outside Circus and Dance & Fire - all of which used Adlib FD2 PA systems with Allen & Heath mixing consoles and a full selection of outboard effects, mics and other accessories.
Collectively, these stages embraced a dynamic range of performance genres, from conventional band set ups to comedy turns, aerial artists, poets, fire performers, physical theatre, live arts and everything in between, within, without and beyond the imaginative concepts of 'performance'.
In addition to running these sound systems, Adlib's front line engineers were in action elsewhere, site-wide, mixing some of their regular clients. Dave Kay engineered The Coral, 'second from top' on the Second Stage on Saturday, with Paul Roberts on monitors, and he also mixed The Basement And the Zutons on the New Band stages on Saturday and Sunday. Andy Dockerty mixed the Inspiral Carpets on the Main stage on Friday, with Steve Cole mixing monitors. Marc Peers was also in force on monitor duty for Tom McRae on the Second Stage.
While Skan PA continued its association with The Other Stage, fielding its Turbosound stock, Bristol-based loudspeaker manufacturer and rental specialist Thunder Ridge serviced Glasto's One World stage, and took the opportunity to put Klark Teknik's Helix digital EQ system through its paces.
Two DN9340 master units and six DN9344 slaves were used, making a total of 28 channels of digital EQ. This enabled every component of both the FOH and monitor system to be under Helix control. With a further three DN9848 loudspeaker processors performing all the crossover functions on the FOH system, Klark Teknik's digital processing devices were very much in evidence.
"Using the Helix processors, especially for the monitor system, made the setting up and operation of the stage sound so much quicker and easier, both for our own engineers, and visiting guests," said Phil Lowther, Thunder Ridge's technical director.
"Each monitor send had a channel of Helix and the system was initially voiced using the Helix EQs so all the visiting engineers could be presented with a 'flat' set of graphics as their starting point. If any consistent pattern of alterations became apparent, these could then be programmed into the Helix system."
Lowther continued: "This is the second year running that we've used DN9848 processors as the main system loudspeaker controllers at FOH. In terms of their sound quality and flexibility they really are our number one choice. The best metering I've seen on a speaker processor, combined with great sounding, predictable limiters make it very easy to see just how our systems are being driven, with driver failure being virtually a thing of the past."
Sennheiser UK once again exclusively sponsored the New Tent. The microphone giant worked closely with sound company Southwest Audio and production company Reality Check to provide a fully specified stage, featuring evolution series wireless and cabled microphones for artists as diverse as John Cale, Lemon Jelly, Kings Of Leon, Flint, Goldfrapp, Tricky, The Delgados, Fineline (winners of the Sennheiser Unsigned Artist Contest 2002), Jesse Malin and Junior Senior.
Other festival stages also benefitted from Sennheiser's technical support, ensuring that the numerous Sennheiser and Neumann users on the bill, including Super Furry Animals, Doves, Alison Moyet, Cooper Temple Clause and Royksopp, had round-the-clock call-out cover. Technical back-up was provided by Sennheiser chief engineer Andy Lillywhite and service engineer Sam Davison, equipped with a full range of test equipment, spares and a specially rigged 4WD support vehicle.
The reliability of Sennheiser equipment meant that the team was only ever called upon to provide general technical advice rather than to repair anything.
Throughout the three-day event Sennheiser gear, including evolution e865 condensers for vocals, four channels of 500 series evolution wireless microphones and a complete inventory of evolution wired microphones on backline (e604/e602 on drums, e609 for guitars, e602 for basses and miniature e608s).
LIGHTING GLASTO
James Thomas Engineering revealed its latest LED creation at Glastonbury - the PixelPAR 90L. The colour-changing luminaire is a Par 64-sized fixture using the ultra-bright Luxeon Emitter LEDs. The bigger style of diode has a larger surface area, and is therefore ideal for all types of wide illumination applications needing versatile wash light fixtures.
Twelve PixelPAR 90Ls were made available to all major artists performing on the Pyramid stage, and were used highly effectively as truss toners, making the stage superstructure glow effervescently into the night. They were also used in the Circus Tent and on the Lost World Stage, while the Jazz Stage lighting rig utilised nine Pixelline 1440 LED battens.
The highly efficient PixelPAR 90L unit is rated at 90 Watts, so draws a minuscule amount of power for its intense brightness. It's typically 90% more efficient than a conventional Par lamp, and brighter than most 600 Series moving light discharge lightsources when in saturated colours. The current version offers a 6 degree beam angle. Future versions will be focusable between 2 and 90 degrees, offering all the options and more than a generic Par can.
PixelPAR 90L is also free from the mechanical constraints of traditional Par cans. As a light source, it can be used as a multi-layer creative tool, offering the possibility of complex and simultaneous effects, like chasing 'ripples' running through a series of fixtures in both directions simultaneously. With between six and 16 million colour permutations possible, lighting designers using this lamp should not find their imaginative scope restricted!
Those impressed with the new product included Andy 'Fraggle' Porter of Pyramid stage lighting contractor Neg Earth, who said: "They're very punchy, they produce crystal clear colours and are easy to control. Apart from being small and neat in terms of the intensity of light output... they're very familiar in shape and appearance!"
James 'Judge' Loudon, the Circus Tent LD, added: "They're bright, powerful and produce a great array of rich primary colours, often out-performing some of the mechanical colour wash devices."
'ONE SOURCE' VIDEO
Event production company Production Network's Laurence Delany and Jay Ellis have organised the cameras and outdoor screens since their first appearance at the festival in 1993. Contractors have changed over the years due to their judgements on the best available equipment, and this year XL Video was chosen to supply both camera/playback production unit and LED screens for the main Pyramid stage - a first for the two elements to come from one supplier.
Another first was the use of three LED screens. Left and right of stage was 39 square metres of Barco DLite 14, configured in 14:9 format, and XL Video's 25 square metre Mobile LED trailer was utilised as a delay screen, positioned at the rear of the FOH mixer tower. Backstage, XL supplied a GVG 1200 based PPU with two Sony D35 cameras, plus Doremi hard drives and Betacam playback for running images and inserts between band performances. The material included videos from Greenpeace, Oxfam, Water-Aid, Jubilee Debt Campaign, Trade Justice Movement, War On Want and other aid focused charities.
XL Video's live-to-screen I-Mag mixes were directed by Chris Keating and Ray Shaw, working with the BBC's nine camera feeds, Broadcast TX and Preview, in addition to XL's Digital system. XL's Video's engineer was Paul Maddock-Jones and the event was project managed for them by Paul Wood. XL also supplied video production including projectors, screens, cameras and playback to many of their regular clients appearing throughout the weekend, including David Gray, the Doves, Lemon Jelly, Death In Vegas, Sigor Ros and The Flaming Lips.
Steering away from the technical... a survey conducted by top music weekly NME found that the majority of those questioned hailed Radiohead's set as the highlight of the festival. Curiously, the same survey discovered that 22% of audience had sex during the event and 65,000 admitted taking drugs. Glasto's obviously cleaning up its act!
It's a sign of the times that Glastonbury's image has become increasingly commercialised over recent years, but a flavour of the 'alternative lifestyle' prevails, even if it's diluted to make it more palatable for the growing number of 'festival virgins'. It still has a unique edge that other festivals can only dream of matching.
Photography by Caroline Shaw and Steve Warren