New York, NY (May 7, 2024)—When Harry Styles spent two years on tour, UK audio provider Britannia Row was on-hand for all 169 shows—as was Styles’ guitarist and co-writer Mitch Rowland. When Rowland, now the first artist signed to his famed pal’s Erskine Records, recently hit the U.S. for his own solo tour, the familiar audio company was the first call.
Audio engineer Christian Zuniga was Rowland’s Monitor Mixer and Production Manager, working with FOH Engineer Miguel Tapia. “The touring band are the same musicians that collaborated on Mitch’s record, which Rob Schanpf, our guitarist, produced,” said Zuniga. They include Matt Schuessler (bass), Schanpf, Aiden Finn (keys), and Sara Rowland, Mitch’s wife.
The tour is running a pair of Allen & Heath dLive CTi1500 desks at both monitors and FOH with DMO MixRack and DX012, fitted with a pair of GigaACE cards for gain sharing. Each console has a Waves card for multitrack recording and virtual soundcheck, with everything running native and no outboard.
Mixing Depeche Mode’s Memento Mori World Tour
“We wanted a small yet powerful footprint that could take us from festival appearances to clubs, as we’ve played some tiny stages such as Pappy and Harriet’s in Joshua Tree, California,” he says. “Miguel introduced me to Allen & Heath on my previous tour with Mexican pop act RBD. Most of those venues were stadiums and Miguel was mixing on a large format dLive. Apart from being impressed by his mixing skills, I was impressed by the native side of the console with no plug-ins. Everything sounded great; pre-amps, compressors, reverbs—it was all very powerful. Once I knew that Allen & Heath make a compact version, mixing on it was a no-brainer!
“There’s very little latency with this console, it has a great layout and fast adaptable workflow. In previous meetings with Mitch and Rob, they wanted to produce a show that sounded like Mitch’s record, ‘Come June’, with analog tubes, etc. An analog system was out of the question due to venue size, but we were very pleased with how this sounded.”
Zuniga uses Shure PSM 1000s for the Rowlands on JH Audio Roxannes, with the rest of the band opting for d&b audiotechnik wedges. “Mitch and Rob are very particular with their guitar sounds. We travel with two vintage Ampeqs Geminis and a vintage Fender Custom Deluxe for their rigs. We use a mixture of Shure KSM32 and Beyerdynamic M60 mics, with the vocal mic being an SE V7. It gives the clarity needed to push Mitch’s vocals out of the mix,” he adds.
