The festival is steeped in history, and returned for its second year with a two-day line up, there are now plans to expand the festival over the next five years. The line-up was headed by Bryan Adams and Paul Weller, joined by American chart toppers Counting Crows, The Darkness (due to support Robbie Williams on his tour this summer), Starsailor, The Ravonettes and Hell is for Heroes.
The line array system design for this site required careful consideration, with residents close-by, noise pollution was an important consideration, Canegreen used Meyer’s online MAPP system to position the speakers to maximum effect. The system incorporated both their M3D line array units and the new Milo line array speakers delivering a tightly controlled sound envelope with excellent sound clarity across all the styles of music on the line-up. Either side of the stage the PA wings consisted of 16 M3D speakers, with 16 Milos hung below, 16 Meyer 650 R2P sub speakers and 10 Meyer MSL4 speaker cabinets as in-fills.
The Milo speakers, featuring for the first time on European soil, are a new addition to Meyer’s M series of speaker cabinets. The Milos are smaller and lighter than the previous line array products, making them suitable for rigging in mid sized theatres, corporate presentations and shows, whilst still having enough power to handle an arena rock show. The PA was controlled by two Yamaha PM4000 mixing desks, which alternated to ensure bands could be on stage in quick succession. Canegreen’s sound technician at the festival was special project’s manager Pete Hughes, with Jerry Eade and Mick Williams as front of house technicians.”
Mark Ward, production manager for the festival explained: “The sound for the festival has been fantastic and we’re really pleased. The environmental health guys are also pleased, as there have been very few noise complaints, which means the Canegreen team got it tuned effectively. Thinking forward, we can use the same system with no problems to cover up to 25,000 people on site, still without delay towers.”
XL video supplied the full live video production and equipment for the festival. The video package was supplied via Blink TV to promoters Solo. Live direction was by live music video pioneer Nick Fry, and the event was project managed by XL director, Des Fallon. Plenty of forethought and detail went into how the live video IMAG for each band would fuse with Blink TV’s downtime inserts, and a specially designed ‘bed’ of music tracks running over the PA throughout the day - when there was no live action onstage. This carefully constructed media ‘stream’ ran as an integrated sound and vision programme, offering both musical cohesion and atmospheric texturing each day. This seamless package involved close collaboration between John Giddings of Solo, event production manger Mark Ward, Fallon and David Llewellyn from Blink.
The two side stage LED screens (constructed from 30sq.m of Barco D14 panels) were also utilized for announcements. XL Video’s OB unit was also in action, engineered by Richard Burford who also oversaw the soundtrack replay from a dedicated hard drive in the truck. Fry directed and mixed all the live video footage from here. Head camera operator was Larne Poland, operating one of four manned cameras – two on track and dolly in the pit, one onstage and one FOH.
XL used four of their new Sony E10 digital broadcast cameras for the first time at an event, which was shot in 16:9 format. Fallon describes the quality of these as “stunning and very user friendly.”
Lighting was supplied by LSD Fourth Phase (for lighting designer Vince Foster
