Escondido, CA (December 4, 2015)—Culture Club toured the U.S. this year supporting its first album of new material in 15 years, Tribes, and supporting the production was Escondido, California-based Sound Image, which provided the audio equipment for the journey.
This meant monitor engineer Nikoma “Niko” Bell chose to use a DiGiCo SD7 console at stageside, providing mixes to the sizable band. “Prior to this tour, I had only used the SD7 on a support tour with Tinie Tempah at front-of-house,” the engineer recalls. “We were supporting Usher and I fell in love with it. When we were selecting gear for this tour, I chose it because I had quite a lot going on onstage with a 14-piece band mostly on in-ears but with some wedges, sidefills and subs in use as well.”
In addition to the original four-man group of Boy George along with guitarist/keyboardist Roy Hay, bassist Mikey Craig and drummer Jon Moss, the Tribes tour featured an extra guitarist, keyboardist, three brass players, two percussionists and three backup vocalists, all of who occupied 36 outputs on the SD7.
“The SD7 was ideal because I needed the flexibility of being able to get to any of the 30-odd mixes in a heartbeat,” Bell adds. “I had duplicate channels for a lot of things, so I didn’t want to get mixed up with what channel I was sending where. For instance, I had four channels for George’s vocal, plus two for each of the background vocalists so that I could process them all differently for various things. I utilized the different banks so that I didn’t get mixed up. I also used the three talkback busses so I could isolate the band, techs and George, which was very helpful.”
Culture Club
www.culture-club.co.uk
Sound Image
www.sound-image.com
DiGiCo
www.DiGiCo.biz
