The sampled sound of a jumbo jet taking off, 12 guitar cabinets, pieces of the ceiling falling down and punters sent into a noise induced trance are just a few elements of My Bloody Valentine’s recent live shows. After a 16-year hiatus the band has emerged from the depths of obscurity to submerge its audience in a sea of dense, textured music. My Bloody Valentine (MBV) began its latest tour with five sold-out shows at the Camden Roundhouse performing arts venue in London.

FOH engineer Michael Brennan is in charge of steering the audience through the sonic tides that bandleader Kevin Shields needs for each gig. With over 20 minutes of sonic explosion reaching in excess of 128 dB built into the end of every set, Brennan has a fleet of Midas desks, XTA processors, loads of outboard gear and an LAcoustics PA system to harness the mad sound.

Brennan has been doing live sound for the last 20 years, working with bands such as Primal Scream, The Cure, Mogwai and many others. Once he was hired for the MBV tour, he began attending rehearsals to pick out the gear that would be used for the live shows. He says: “I started dropping in on their rehearsals and every time I showed up there was a new guitar amp or some other piece of kit, and I could see the whole show building. We ended up using 78 inputs, and that is not being self-indulgent, we have single mics on each amp and there is nothing I can live without.”

With a strict analog-only mandate for the show imposed by Shields, Brennan decided to use the Midas XL4 as it was his board of choice before he started using digital desks. He also revisited the board while working on the final show of The Cure’s tour last year.

“I mixed The Cure for three months on a Digidesign D-Show Profile and then for the last gig of the tour, the party gig, we couldn’t ship the board out to New Zealand, so I had to start all over again and use an XL4, but the show went really well and I knew I had to use it for the MBV tour,” explains Brennan.

While he has been using digital boards exclusively over the last couple of years, Brennan feels that using the analog board is beneficial to MBV’s tour. “Sonically it is better for this tour. When it comes to the 20-minute noise section of You Made Me Realise (the show’s closer) my input gains on the output stage of the board are slamming and it sounds desirable. It’s not breaking up, it’s just overdriving, and the gain on Shield’s amp is doing the same thing. If we were in the digital domain that overdrive would not sound desirable, so from that point of view it is much better, but from a logistics point of view it isn’t very practical.”

Considering the FOH set up requires a 16 by 12 foot riser specially built for their set up, it surely isn’t sensible or common from a modern live sound perspective. “There are bands that would need less stage space than our FOH set-up requires,” jokes Brennan.

The main consoles are a 48 channel XL4 and 30 channel XL3 combined at FOH to handle 78 channels of inputs, along with XTA processors and some vintage outboard gear that Brennan specifically chose for the show.

“I went round to Kevin’s studio in London and picked from processors and compressors and preamps to use for the tour. I have Manley compressors and some Alan Smart C2 compressors. The outboard racks are also filled with an Empirical Labs EL8, Manley stereo variable limiter/compressor, a TC Helicon VoicePro, an Eventide Harmonizer (H3000-D/SE), a XTA SiDD and a Drawmer 1960 tube compressor.

“I picked out some really tasty Manley valve compressors to use across Kevin’s guitars and the drums as well as a C2 compressor. The Crush button on the C2 gives us the full stereo mix of the drums. I will never mix drums without one of them again.”

Another piece of outboard that has been essential to the tour is a TC Helicon VoicePro. “It is a great bit of kit because it records the vocal at the output stage in real time, processes it and plays it back in real time so they are kind of like vocal doublers,” says Brennan.

The PA used to handle the extremely loud show is a combination of a several L-Acoustics systems consisting of 18 dv-DOSCs, 16 ARCS and 20 SB218s; nine per side for main hangs and three along the front edge of the stage for front fill. There were also 20 ARCS boxes and single dVDOSCs boxes all over the circular auditorium dedicated just to vocals, with smaller Meyer Sound boxes around the venue for further vocal support.

“The PA is partially inspired by The Grateful Dead’s wall of sound PA from 1974. They designed a PA with individual columns behind each member of the band. Each column was used for one specific instrument and the band played in front
of the PA,” Brennan explains.

“Similar to the Dead’s system, we have a few loudspeakers running specific things like Kevin’s guitars, which is essential because they are such quiet singers, and to get the vocals above the music I have to dedicate some speakers to the vocals. The band is extremely loud, but it is essential to get the vocals out there because they are as strong as any Beach Boys or Beatles melodies.

“I have control over every element of the PA, so during You Made Me Realise I can just turn up a few knobs and the mix comes out of every speaker. It is getting pretty interesting now; we are starting to think about surround sound for the live show. I want to start talking to Shields about putting up some speakers in the back and just fucking with people’s heads for a bit.

“Shields wants people to be surrounded by sound; he does not like the idea of the sound being louder in the front than it is in the back of the room. The live environment is mostly generated by what is coming out of his guitars. It starts out at 30 Hertz and goes up to 20 k; that is the full spectrum of frequencies all the time, and I just simply amplify that.

“Close micing has been the key to achieving any sort of separation for these shows. It means we have to run pretty low gains as well, and for me the trick is not running high gains and leaving the mics open. I use the XTA processors or my groups to suck out the sound.”

Meanwhile, at the side of the stage, the high sound levels have also made Ger Colclough’s monitor mixing very difficult. A Midas Heritage 3000 with 48 inputs is used to mix the monitors, and the high stage volumes (116 dB from Shield’s guitar alone) and very quiet singing makes it necessary to push the vocal mics wide open to increase their gain, making feedback a major concern.

“It is just the worst possible situation: The loudest band in the world with the quietest vocalists. It is a constant fight to get the mix where it needs to be. The vocals are always on the verge of feeding back because both of us are always pushing the limit. We have been experimented with many different mics. Kevin is using an Audix OM7 and Bilinda (female vocalist) sings through an OM 5. We had Bilinda on a Shure Beta 57 last week and she went back to the OM 5 because it is brighter in the 2 K area, which gives it more bite,” explains Colclough.

Brennan insists the excessive sound and noise levels during the shows are not intended merely for an added shock factor. “Shield’s has a total plan; it is totally orchestrated. If you really listen, he is playing little parts and little bits and looping them during You Made Me Realise and still keeping that outrageous noise going. He has a master plan of the journey that he wants to take people on sonically. He knows exactly where he wants it to go, and I put in some sub stuff to add to the dynamics of what is going on.

“Since he told me his idea I have started to listen and I have also noticed people in the crowd reacting to it as well. People become completely possessed by what he is doing, it is a special moment.”

Some may call it sonic ecstasy while others may call it just noise, but it is impossible to deny that MBV’s performances create a completely unique show that has taken the live experience to a completely new level.
www.mybloodyvalentine.co.uk