Massive Attack tour with S3L
Published: MEA
LEBANON: As part of their recent tour, Massive Attack played the Byblos Festival in Jbeil. An Avid S3L console has been at FOH for the band at every leg of the tour, put to use by Robb Allan.
‘What I do is twofold: I work for Avid as part of the live sound team and I mix bands,’ explained Mr Allan. ‘For the last four years, much of my energies have been spent on the development of the new Avid S3L system. This summer I’ve taken it out on tour to mix FOH for my favorite band in the whole world, Massive Attack, thereby combining my two worlds.’
The equipment in use at FOH on the tour includes the S3L in an AdLib audio flightcase, a MacBook Pro for Pro Tools record and playback, Rosendahl Mif4 to convert the LTC to MTC, Roland UM ONE USB Midi interface, and Focal CM50 monitors for virtual soundcheck.
‘To get ready for the tour, I spent three days in the Massive Attack studio working on arrangements and ideas followed by five days of production rehearsals in the Bristol O2 Academy to get the show programmed,’ continued Mr Allan.
At several of the tour locations, including Byblos, Mr Allan welcomed some local engineers to meet him during the sound check. He gave them an overview of the system and let them be there when he did the sound check.
‘Massive Attack’s show was mesmerising. Robb was awesome and he took his time to explain to us everything he was doing,’ noted Jean Gibran, who was at the show with Mr Allan on behalf of ElectraAv – Avid’s partner in Lebanon. ‘During the day, the S3L proved to be a great reliable and powerful machine. The band didn’t even bother to come for the sound check. It was a pure virtual soundcheck played on Pro Tools via AVB while Robb worked with every virtual musician alone just by hitting the solo key. Our sound engineer guests were stunned. They never saw a sound check done this way before.’