Depeche Mode’s Live Setup Revealed
“They’ve got three keyboard players so they do play a lot but sometimes it has to go to the Radar.”
And are the lighting queues from the Radar?
PE: “No they’re from Graham, who’s front of house! He’s a great lighting director. There are starts for triggering the video but as for the performance, the flashes of light, that’s all old school. During the gig he’s dancing around, really getting into it.”
And once again, a backup Radar for your Radar?
PE: “Yes, we have two Radars, an A and a B – one is ran simultaneously for backup, so it’s just like the old days. You set one off and the other is set in chase. There’s a tone on a spare track on each Radar and they feed into a Radial SW8 switch box.
“If there’s a green light there then it can hear the tone. If that stops it immediately switches to the output from the B machine.”
How quickly can it make the switch?
PE: “You don’t hear it. We’ve done A to B tests and the band didn’t notice it. And it’s happened live a few times. The daftest times was when we had these torches mounted here [Paul gestures towards a pair of mini gooseneck lights, now safely away] and they got knocked and fell perfectly and hit the stop button. We looked and went “It’s on the B machine! Why’s it on the B machine?” And then we realised what had happened.”
Can it flip back from B to A?
PE: “Ah, it’d be out of time then. So you’re stuck on B until the end of the song. But it’s not like we have to make it to the end of the gig on our backup – with everyone staring at it…”
Is all the kit brand new for this tour?
PE: “The Radars were on the last tour but the keyboards are all new. We had Viruses before but we’ve got the newer ones for this tour. The Receptors are all new too. And this is the first tour we’ve done with the L-Acoustics K1 rig, only because it’s so new.
“This package cost one million Euros and so far there are only ten of these in the world. We’re only using the O2’s house delay compensation speakers, the rest is all ours and we’re very pleased with how the K1 sounds. Then there’s two new Midas XL8s – one by the stage for monitor mixing and another for front of house. We’re the first tour to use two XL8s.”
One of the team’s two Midas XL8s.
The entire rig seems incredibly well thought-out and compact. Does it pack up pretty small?
PE: “It’s incredibly compact. Unbelievable, in fact. U2 were following us around and they had a hundred trucks, but then that was the whole ‘claw’ set up. We’re doing this in eight trucks and we can pack up the backline in half an hour.”
What has been the biggest gig of the tour?
PE: “Milan was 73,000. The O2 is 17 or 18,000. That’s big. But Milan was 73… It was unbelievable.”
Ableton Live, Andrew Fletcher, Christian Eigner, Edirol PCR-800, GMedia ImpOSCar, Jez Webb, London O2 Arena, Martin Gore, Massive, Midas XL8, Muse Receptors, Native Instruments Kontakt, Paul Eastman, Peter Gordeno, Pro Tools, Radar System, Roland RD-700, Shure SM57, Sounds, Synthogy Ivory, TC Electronic G System, Tour Of The Universe, Virus Polar, Virus TI2
This is awesome stuff but, where was this published before.
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