TING TINGS TOUR WITH CAP'S MARTIN AUDIO COMPACTS

Electro-punk pop duo The Ting Tings tasked their new FOH engineer, Trevor Gilligan, with creating a challenging mix on their recent UK tour.

This was the group's first production tour, and while they occasionally played through the house system, the staple was for nine Martin Audio W8LC compact line array enclosures to be flown either side (with four WS218X subs groundstacked).

In the wake of their big-selling single That's Not My Name it's no surprise that most dates were sold out well in advanced. This included Brixton Academy, where the larger format (12 x W8LC's per side and six subs) were rigged (although after sound checking a power outage in the Borough of Lambeth forced the show to be cancelled).

The experienced Trevor Gilligan is an old hand at powering up his favoured Martin Audio Compact Line Array - again provided by production company, Capital Sound Hire - having earlier worked FOH stints with the system on Starsailor, Kasabian, the Hoosiers, St. Etienne and other tours.

'I have always liked the Martin Audio line array concept because it is a horn-loaded system and you can use the colouration to your advantage. It's an easy system to work - they are certainly punchy yet easy on the ear; for the Ting Tings we are delivering a nice fat 100dB.'

Jules De Martino (drums, guitar, vocals) and Katie White (vocals, guitar, bass drum) serve up a versatile mix, swopping instruments mid-number and introducing a brass section on four numbers, while De Martino delivers a maze of electronic loops activated by half a dozen foot panels.

The band first came to the attention of Capital Sound's business development manager Richard Hannan early in their career and now they are part of the company's portfolio. Trevor Gilligan (already a member of the Cap Sound 'family') was brought on board by previous sound engineer Johnny Dodkin, while Capital's system tech on the tour was Toby Donovan and overall production/tour manager, Brett Spence.

Gilligan says that the duo had asked him to dirty up the mix 'to make the drums more bumpy and fat. Jules wanted it gritty at the low end.

'In other words, although the mix is similar to the album I have had to add weight to the low end so that once the crowd recognise the song they can really get off on it.'

He is using the effects on his Yamaha M7CL minimally. 'It's mainly a pretty raw mix; it's essentially them coming down the channels.'

For Toby Donovan, even in the smaller club venues hanging the W8LC's from the rigging points hasn't been an issue. 'The weight is 834kg for 12 enclosures, 663kg for nine boxes - well within the usual one-ton loading points.

'Besides, we have our own single point pick up flybars and we've used single point per side in all venues.' On occasions, where the load points are reduced, it has been easy to ground-stack part of the system.

In addition Cap Sound fielded four Martin W2's for front fill and a W8C for outfill. 'This is just to give presence around the side where the array isn't hitting,' says Toby.

Martin Audio components also featured heavily at the stage end where James Lawrenson and monitor tech Dan Kent had fashioned a mix of in-ears and Martin Audio's sleek LE1500 floor wedges (Cap Sound having come up with some clever presets of their own to optimize the floor monitors).

Meanwhile, with the tour now complete, the Salford duo will start working on their follow-up album to their successful debut, We Started Nothing.

Further information from:

Maureen Hayes Jerry Gilbert
Martin Audio JGP Public Relations
Tel: +44 (0)1494 535312 Tel: +44 (0)1707 258525
Fax: +44 (0)1494 438669 Fax: +44 (0)1707 267140