The eccentric and sometimes dramatic band Mercury Rev brought their eclectic live show to London’s Shepherds Bush Empire this month as part of a two-month European tour. With the help of their Danish friend and FOH engineer, Mads Nørgaard Nielsen, the band sorted through masses of audio to broadcast a loud, yet dynamic mix of spacey prog rock.
 
Mercury Rev is a band deeply steeped in indie rock history. They started in Buffalo, New York in the late 1980s with Jonathan Donahue (vocalist/acoustic guitar), Grasshopper (moth-light guitars, clarinet, tettix wave accumulator), Jeff Mercel (drums, piano, keyboards) and Dave Fridmann (bass explore, telescope, knob twiddler).

Donahue was also a guitarist for the travelling indie, prog
circus The Flaming Lips, but left to pursue Mercury Rev full time. Dave Fridmann toured with the band in the early years and left to become a renowned studio engineer who would go on to produce critically acclaimed albums by the Flaming Lips, Weezer, Mogwai and, most recently, MGMT, while remaining with the band for
studio production.

Mercury Rev recently released its seventh studio album, Snowflake Midnight, and hit the road for a string of pre-Christmas, European dates. The densely layered songs have featured a variety of sequences, percussion and other strange noises that they use during each live show.

Nielsen and his crew first met the band while working for the Danish band Mew. “Mercury Rev has the same European booking agent as Mew in Europe and they needed a full crew for a one-off gig in Spain. We are really big Mercury Rev fans, so we were like, ‘hell yeah we already know all the songs’. So we did the show and got really drunk with them afterwards.”

Nielsen credits getting pissed with the band as one of the ways he was hired as their full-time engineer. He states: “It helps a lot to be a good guy in this business since 90 per cent of your time involves being social. There are many hours spent sitting in a cramped tour bus, so you have to be likeable to get asked back.”

Aside from being a good, sociable guy, Nielsen also helps the band by pulling his sleeves up and mixing on the fly at each show. “I see myself as a player,” he explains. “I like to be radical with stuff and mix a lot, which is good for this band. I can’t just have a mix set up and leave it, because I have to feature different things in each song, so it is more important to be a full on mixer.

“They are really particular about their sound and want it to be loud and full while remaining dynamic, which is kind of hard when you are pushing it to the limit. Sometimes I have to take the sound up and down and really work with the dynamics. I can’t do it with external compressors; I have to do that with the faders. They produce a dynamic on stage, but when it is coming through a PA as massive as it does, I still have to know what to push or lower when it all kicks in.”


Nielsen brought his own mini arsenal of gear to use for each show on the tour. He explains, “I have a Focusrite ISA 430 as a preamp for lead vocals. It is clean and very good for Jonathan’s vocals. It is a great preamp with compression and eq that doesn’t colour the sound or boost anything too much, which gives me the headroom I need for the vocal to be on top of the massive mix.

“On the ISA430’s insert I have the TC Electronic EQ Station. It helps by allowing me to nudge out frequencies that tend to feedback, and by using the dynamic compressor as a de-esser.The EQ Station is one of my favourite tools to use for inserts live. I use it for drum compression and as my main eq and compressor for the whole mix. The three-band compressor really pushes the various PA systems as far as they can go while comping everything together nicely without destroying the mix.”

On top of the Focusrite and TC racks sits a laptop equipped with Logic Pro’s new MainStage software. “I am able to have all my channel strips from Logic, and use the various effects,” he comments. “I run that from the Metric Halo I/O interface, so I have four stereo effects with me at all times, which I can design and work on as the tour goes along.”

Working on a different desk every night means that Nielsen has to learn the quirks and features of each board quickly, as well as how to make the band sound best through every PA. His favourite digital board so far has been Soundcraft’s Vi6 console. “We had a Vi6 at one of the venues and it sounded really good,” he explains. “It has Lexicon effects and a really good dynamics section, containing a dynamic eq/de-ess function, where you can compress certain frequencies instead of the whole spectrum.

“There is so much going on during the show: sequence tracks, massive guitars and everything is just full on. Being able to compress without full band compression works because you don’t lose the dynamics.”

Although the digital Soundcraft board has been his favourite on the tour, Nielsen prefers to mix the band on analog consoles. Luckily, Shepherds Bush’s house desk is a Midas Heritage 3000. He remarks: “With this band I prefer an analog desk because it is still faster for me. Digital boards have nice features like total recall, but each venue is different, so I would have to adjust the eq to fit the rooms anyway. There is no way that I could have a standard scene stored for a song that would work at every venue because I need to adjust the right frequencies for each tune, especially when rooms really project a certain frequency.”

Another element that has created extra work for the crew is working with a new PA each night. Nielsen admits that it is not uncommon to find him up in the rafters adjusting the PA system at a venue. “Here at Shepherds Bush it is really nice, but sometimes we get a really rough set up to work with,” Nielsen notes.  

“Our Bristol show at The Academy was horrible because it has an old PA that was flown all wrong and the room was half empty. I usually just have to adjust the levels between the four bands, but sometimes you really have to work.”  

Neilsen admits that the rigours of life on the road take a toll on him, but the excitment of mixing live keeps him going. He explains, “I just like being out in the live environment because you have to be quick, do spur-of-the- moment adjustments and fix problems, whereas in the studio you can spend days on just one song.”
Another annoying factor for Nielson is constantly dealing with the sound limitations, natural or otherwise, imposed by venues and outdoor festivals. “It hasn’t been that bad on this tour, but I think when we get to France it will a problem, and Copenhagen has a 103 dB limit, which is not loud enough for this band,” he comments.

“It has to be loud. It can’t be any other way because I can’t mix them like a pop band. The sound has to be full on and I have to push it. Again, that is where the TC Electronics EQ Station comes in handy because of its three-band compressor. It is great when you have a sound limit to stay under because it works like a mastering device in some ways, so I can bring the level just below the limit without losing anything.  

Aside from Mercury Rev, Nielsen also works for the disco revivalists Junior Senior and several other Danish DJs and dance outfits. He has found that, although some of the clubs can be a bit dodgy, the PA systems in dance venues tend to be a better than those in the rock world. Given a choice he would use d&b audiotechnik’s J System, Meyer’s Milo or Funktion-One. He explains: “I came across Funktion-One systems while touring with DJ Trentemoeller. They are really clear without being massive in the high mids.”

Nielsen and crew had a particularly amazing show at  Shepherds Bush as they used the venue’s floor-to-ceiling PA and Midas console to deliver a truly great display of creative music played by seasoned professionals. With only a small arsenal of hand-selected racks on his side, Nielsen kept the packed house begging for more with each song as he worked near perfection out of his multi-channel mixing instrument.
www.mercuryrev.com