Francesca Lombardo plays the inaugural RPMM Festival in Porto
Portugal - With a well-received live set at the inaugural RPMM Festival in the Portuguese city of Porto, Francesca Lombardo – famous for her individual electronic sound – gave rise to a thrilling fusion of live and pre-programmed music. At front of house was live engineer Mattia Sartori, who captured the set on one of his two JoeCo BBR1B Blackbox multi-track recorders.
London-based Sartori has held senior audio engineering and project management posts across the world and regularly takes his Blackbox recorders out on the road, enjoying “a totally robust and reliable recording solution with no worries about software and compatibility issues”. He acquired his first Blackbox recorder in 2016 and since then has recorded a variety of artists, from classical singer Carly Paoli at London’s Cadogan Hall, to the percussion driven, electronic quartet Penya.
With performances that incorporate piano, vocals and DJ sets, Francesca Lombardo is among the most dynamic of all contemporary electronic artists. For her live set at the RRPM festival, Sartori had “every instrument stereo or mono, and several microphones coming into the recorder”, a total of 18 channels into one BBR1B to capture her dynamic electronic sound without missing a single detail.
“Once again, the BBR1B performed brilliantly,” he says, “and in fact the show reminded me that there is a real sweet-spot in the unit with regard to where it performs best in terms of sonics. In my opinion, that’s where it hits the red light – you have to go into the red every now and then! That’s where it can really come into its own, sound-wise.”
Sartori reports that the Blackbox played an integral part in his success with Lombardo’s set, commenting, “It is one of those pieces of equipment that you can just set up and forget about. You plug in the USB stick, format it, press record, and you are done. Then at the end of the show you pick it up and you are on to the next thing. It’s so easy.”
(Jim Evans)

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