Skan’s d&b PA rig ensures Pulp’s tour is in a Different Class

Skan has provided the PA hire for Britpop icons Pulp’s reunion gigs across the UK and Ireland this summer.

The Sheffield band’s cleverly arranged orchestral audio journey, set to a backdrop of cinematic-esque visuals, took in venues such as the Latitude Festival, London’s Finsbury Park, the Isle of Wight Festival, Dublin’s St Anne’s Park.

Production manager Joel Stanley says: “I quickly recognised the need for attention to detail, quality equipment and a great crew – so Skan were my first and only choice for this tour. I knew that the audio would be the only department that wasn’t going out to tender.”

Front-of-house mixer Barak Koren was charged with injecting a live dimension into Pulp’s back catalogue, to introduce hits such as Common People and Do you Remember the First Time to a new fanbase.

“I’d never worked with Skan before,” he says. “The globalisation aspect of a company can be handy, because I know that everything is available to me everywhere I go, even if I have no previous experience with them. When I ask for the tools, my creativity is then open, and I can go in any direction I want. The way I truly start my process is to have listening sessions – even before conversations with the artist.

“The record will always be a starting point, mainly for me to create it all in my mind before I even get to rehearsals. That’s the most important thing, in a way; you have to be able to visualise the mix before you even have the tools. During rehearsals, I work with the band on the music content and in the evenings, when the band has gone, I’ll run ProTools and add my colours to the mix canvas.”

Koren’s artistry is backed by an Avid Venue S6L 32D control surface, and he employs Avid ProTools, Waves Plug-ins and Smaart acoustic measurement software. After a discussion with singer Jarvis Cocker, an Audix OM5 microphone was chosen.

Koren’s PA of choice has always been d&b audiotechnik. “I’ve been working with d&b systems for many years, since the J Series days, and I’ve always found it to be a straightforward, great-sounding system, from design to execution. Now that the SL-Series is here, it’s a real game changer.”

For the two shows at Sheffield’s Utilita Arena, the PA system featured KSL main and side hangs, with flown J Subs and SL Subs in the pit. Y10P cabinets were used for the front fills, and more KSL loudspeakers for the delays, powered by d&b’s D80 amplifiers.

Monitor Engineer Ilias Andrianatos, who has toured with Skan on various projects since 2005, says: “It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done with monitors. We’re running 109 channels, 31 mixes and there’s 17 people on stage, including the 10-piece string section. My main focus is Jarvis; he likes to hear everything in his mix, so it’s actually a front-of-house mix applied on stage.

“Due to my high channel count and the number of mixes I’m dealing with, I need a desk that can handle it all. I chose the DiGiCo Quantum 5 and try to keep things as simple as possible – I don’t use any of the toys that are available.

“It’s challenging because when you have strings involved, most tours would have a second engineer who is there to look after the string players. But I decided to take up the challenge and mix everyone’s monitors. Everybody seems happy, which is good, because I’m only happy only when they’re happy.”