sleepmakeswaves australian tour 2017

Supporting Underoath (USA)
Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Fremantle

Preparation

Preparation for this run was much the same as the previous run with Mono, getting familiar with the set and making sure I have everything necessary to make it work. Both bands fall under the post-rock category of music, the main difference being that Sleepmakeswaves draw on synth driven backing tracks a lot more than Mono do, which serves to augment the larger dynamic parts of each track.

So in addition to learning the songs I had Alex (Bass) sit me down with their Ableton sessions and ran through all the track parts to each song. This gave me a really nice idea of where the tracks sit tonally and from a frequency content perspective, which during the shows will let me judge guitar and bass tones more accurately to avoid cluttering the mix with too much of the same frequencies. 

Brisbane

I’ve done Eatons Hill a few times now and am pretty well versed in how the room goes and how to work it to make things sit properly. HOWEVER: between Underoath checking and us getting on to do our thing, one side of the subs and infills amplifiers died so we had to soundcheck with a slightly lopsided PA. Fortunately subwoofers push out sub-bass frequencies in a omnidirectional pattern which means that they project in a 360 degree circle from the source and its very hard to hear that the low frequencies are coming from one side anyway. In addition low frequencies travel a lot further before dissipating which means that a lot more people in the room at the time will hear the low frequencies at a lower level so if there is one side of the subwoofers missing its not a HUGE drama. There are a lot of other issues that come into play to make it a solid low end when there are two working subs like usual (ie. power alley and non-omni directional subs which is a thingI can hear it, which means that I had to check the band conservatively knowing that a replacement amplifier will be installed and working between soundcheck and showtime but for the average punter they will still hear and feel a sense of solid bass in most parts of a medium-large sized room without missing out too much. obviously its not ideal which meant that the translation from soundcheck to showtime was a bit rough but the in-house engineer Alistair is a really great help and made things as smooth as possible. 

The show itself was ok. Lachlan (guitar) played his first ever show with the band on this one and I think since last time I worked with the band with Dan (ex-guitar) there have been introductions of different guitar models and pedals and setups and I lost a little bit of normality in what works and doesn’t work for the songs and the style. What that sounded like at showtime was a really nice clear, chimed guitar tone from Otto (guitar) and a kind of warbley, slightly muddy tone from Lachlan. It was a challenge to get the two balance together well through each song, especially considering its been 6 months since I’ve worked with them. The funny thing was that Lachlan’s leads were bright and clear and solid but his ‘riffs’ were kind of unintelligible and again, a challenge to mix and balance against Otto. On the change of setup thing, Lachlan also plays a semi-hollow baritone 2012 Shub guitar (which is just a slightly longer neck length which means that it needs to be tuned way differently from a standard guitar to pitch the same notes at each string) while Otto plays an aluminium neck EGC Jazzmaster style guitar. What this means is that there are two wildly different guitar tones coming from each side of the stage which need to be balanced and fit together without becoming a cluttered mess of notes. Thankfully the guys seem to have thought about this and have Otto playing a very mid-range forward tone while Lachlan is playing with a very mid-range scooped tone so they kind of fit around each other naturally anyway, however there is a bit of work that needs to be done to keep the parts of the signal they have in common somewhat consistent so that one isn’t much brighter than the other for example. So I am doing this tour with two mins on each guitar cab again, one ribbon and one dynamic. This gives me a kind of painting palette to push or pull out different parts of the tones as needed throughout the set, which for a band like these guys is very very important considering the different roads each song goes down as the set progresses: Emergent is a much more rock and roll song whereas In Limbs and Bones is a more ethereal experience.
The one, if any, issue I had the first time I worked with Sleepmakeswaves was with Tim (Drums) who absolutely beats the snot out of his drums every night. And its not so much that by itself that is the problem but if I don't have enough channels to work with outside of the headliners channels and have to sacrifice things like overhead mics on the drum kit, I run into dramas with things like putting a gate on the toms. A gate basically cuts off the signal coming from the mic before it gets to the PA below a certain noise level. What this does is allows you to isolate just the drum that the microphone is on without picking up a bunch of cymbal bleed or other drums in the same mic, you get cleaner sounds and can do more with it as far as panning and effects like reverb. But with Tim, because hes so heavy handed a lot of the time the gate will still let a bunch of cymbal noise and whatnot in anyway. So this time around I made sure that we had overheads to control the cymbal noise coming to the PA more accurately and decided to not gate the drums at all. While this did help in some instances on the toms, I should have gated the kick as it came out quite boomy in that room and could have used a bit more control. But another thing to remember for next time.
We hung out in the dressing room for more or less the rest of the night, trying to keep out of the headliners way and let them do their thing, but Otto and I went up and watched some of Underoath from side of stage (sidenote: this tour is Otto's teenage wet dream. Hes a massive fan and makes a point of watching them every night and taking every opportunity to get to the know them. Its really cool to see and makes me wish I had the same enthusiasm, but then I wouldnt be the grumpy sound guy stereotype so swings and roundabouts).
I got home after the show REALLY late and couldnt sleep too well but basically packed my things and got ready to fly to Sydney. Night!

Sydney

I knew that we were playing the Enmore Theatre in Sydney in advance (obviously) and having never been there and heard nothing but good things I was naturally pretty excited. The spec sheets I received before the tour also listed a Midas Heritage 3000 console at front of house, which for a good portion of live engineers is like telling them that when they go into work tomorrow there will be a gigantic gold nugget that they can just have. So really excited for this one. We get to Sydney and it is no less than 42 degrees. Humidity must have been close to 80% and it just plain sucked. In every way. So we do the luggage thing at the airport, get the van and the band all go to their own houses (they live in Sydney) and I went to the rehearsal space to meet Dan (ex-guitar who was teching for us for this show), load the rest of the bands gear and then head to the venue. 

So all of these individual tasks were the most physically demanding things we could have possibly done considering the atmosphere and every 5 seconds either one or both of us audibly groaned, we already stank and were generally miserable. But it was great to see Dan again (he plays in another band called Meniscus who I have worked with a bunch, really cool band and good friends), catch up a little and get ourselves sorted for the show.
We get to the venue and Im blown away. The Enmore Theatre is a gigantic old space with a lot of really cool architecture and that old building smell, a huge stage and gigantic PA. So I did a bit of walking around getting to know the space and finally laid eyes on the Midas console...but it was unplugged, leads hanging next to it and my heart kinda sank a little bit. Then I noticed the Avid console setup in front of it and it clicked that Underoath's front of house guy Savage must be using them every night. There are a few reasons why the digital console route would be more preferable than old analogue goodness: first and foremost on a digital console, more often than not you'll have a world of more flexibility in signal processing like gating/compression/eq etc. Every single channel can have one of each of these which in the real world analogue scenario would mean having racks and racks of hardware units wired and humming and physically patched into the console to get the same effect. On top of this, and in particular with the Avid consoles, is plugin compatibility: you can bring studio grade digital approximations of hardware units (called plugins) into the console and patch them over any single channel youve got. This also includes using FX driven plugins like reverbs and delays which gives you a WHOLE lot more control over the actual engineering side of things. The preamps (the things in the stage rack where each mic is plugged in that boosts the signal coming from the mic to an audible level) dont sound as good on a digital console as on an analogue one (not a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking) but the ability to actually engineer a show is much more comprehensive with digital. So thats what they were doing. Come to find out that I AM still using the Midas but I need to take alllllll of the compressors and gates and everything else and patch them in myself. Which would normally be fine but I didnt set the racks of units up and have no idea which cable loom is going to which unit etc so on top of having to run around and set up merch and organise dressing rooms and riders and all the other good tour manager things, I also had to essentially set up the Front of House part of the PA. COOL.
But anyway, it got done, Underoath did their soundcheck and we got stuck into ours. Because the band lives in Sydney their manager, Mike does as well, so we were also graced with his calming presence for the night. 
Now I love Mike. He not only runs the bands label Bird's Robe Records, he also puts out music by a lot of post-something bands that are all fantastic, he tours them and internationals that are always super high quality, works really hard at making things fair and balanced and is just a genuinely lovely person to be around. He can also name every single mens and womens Wimbledon champion, by year, for the past 50 years or something. Its something to see. But apart from this he is also super into being involved with what happens with these kinds of tours, so he makes the tour books and advances all the venue information and does all the things the tour manager would normally do before the run starts (lucky me). The best thing about all this is that he knows the bands dynamic, the person relationships that exist within that and what usually happens in a live setting for that particular band which, for me, meant that I could get a good idea of things to watch for during the set and little tricks to help solidify the sound from where I am at the console. Which is brilliant, because its one thing to have the chops and to know the songs but if you dont have a good understanding of HOW the musicians play and whats actually going on at the stage end of things, there is still 50% of a show that can pass you by, and it has nothing to do with what you're doing as an engineer its just being aware of other factors that will influence what happens before the sound even reaches the microphones. 

Soundcheck was ok, my world was stuck riiiiight at the back of the hall under two levels of balcony so getting a good idea of how things sounded out the front was super difficult; the balcony itself ran about 10 metres in front of where I was which meant that it was physically blocking half of the PA from getting sound direct to my ears, so what I was hearing was very muffled. In conjunction because of the size of the room, whenever I would get under headphones there was a good half a second or more delay between the direct sound in my ears and hearing or feeling the sound coming from the stage. So I had to spend a lot of time walking the room and making sure I knew the difference between the actual audience area and where I was at front of house. 

Between soundcheck and the show we kind of just huddled in the dressing room, it being the least blistering, lava filled place we could find to avoid roasting alive. Aaron (Underoath drums) and Tim (Underoath guitar) hung out for a while and had a chat and a beer which was cool, our first interaction with those guys was super easy, laid back and friendly. Lachlan was shown a new way to secure his in-ear system to avoid it coming out mid set, so he was happy and Otto, I don’t really know what happened but he became a bubbling puddle of happiness on the floor (I kid). 

The show went super well, again the same kind of issue with the difference in sound at front of house and out in the audience meant that I was constantly second-guessing myself on small changes, heading out to hear the difference then going back and knocking whatever the change was in half. 

As I mentioned earlier the Enmore is a huge grand old theatre, kind of like a big version of The Tivoli in Brisbane, and places like that just soak up or reflect sound in a really nice way, the structures vibrate when you really give it some stick and the air itself pulsates and resonates around you. So naturally I WANTED to make the loud parts fucking loud, and it ruled. 

Being a theatre the lighting setup for us was kind of limited, a few coloured par can pairs overhead and a front wash and that was kind of it. But the in-house guy Alex did a good job of it and it helped bring the show to life.

Lachlan’s second show was a bit more confident, I think there was only one small error somewhere although I can’t remember what it was so it can’t have been that bad. Otto had me set him up a vocal mic tonight as he likes to have a big yell in some parts of songs for no reason in particular and thought it might be cool to have a mic there to add a little something to the layers and layers of noise in the music. Unfortunately because I had it set to his talking voice which is MUCH quieter than his yelling voice (duh), as soon as he went in for a yodel it came it blaring and distorting the input on the console and I just wasn’t quick enough to pull it down and it sounded kinda dumb. So I think if we do that again I’m just gonna turn it off unless he’s talking between tracks.

Underoath killed it again, they essentially play two sets (being that the purpose of the tour is to play two whole records) which comes in at a total of about 1.5 hours, which for a band as energetic as that is a massive task. Its awe-inspiring to see Aaron belt the crap out of the drums for that long and Spencer (vocals) to keep his shit tight and raw. Very cool to see happen.

After things wrapped up I did the usual run around harassing Underoath’s TM for numbers on things, harassing Sheree our merch lord for numbers as well, sneaking in a beer or two, loading the gear into the van then doing the rounds thanking our venue guys for their help and professionalism (so if you’re reading this Matteo, Alex, Bob, Kelly etc. thanks again!). Dan and I went to my hotel, unloaded our fly gear then said our goodbyes and I went to bed. Another pretty late night.

Melbourne 1

I woke up in Sydney pretty early, around 6, feeling not too shit considering it was only about 5 hours sleep. Had a coffee and found myself a space on the floor and did a half hour or so of yoga. Yoga is something I’ve always been a bit resistant to, I’ve generally always been a pretty impatient person and sitting in a pose for even 5 minutes never really appealed to me. However after years of doing crewing work at festivals and smaller corporate audio jobs I developed a really bad back pain issue. Went and saw an osteopath for it and she said I’d likely caused a lot of stress on my lower back discs which was why the pain was so present, and that I needed to align myself properly to get it back under control. And I shit you not, a week or two of solid yoga had me back in action like I was a young man again. So when I know I’m gonna be on the road for an extended time I like to try and make yoga a priority to avoid any issues with loading/sitting in vans/etc. Plus living from a suitcase, not sleeping/eating well, being in a new city every day can have quite a considerable mental toll if you’re not ready for it, which has happened to me before. And considering I’ve just come through some super heavy, mentally exhausting stuff at home, having something like yoga to fall back on really helps keep my mental state focused and centred. 

Got myself up and got the fly gear, met Tim and his partner and went to the airport, went straight to the front of the line and got on another plane. I must have been more tired than I first realised because I was out, absolutely zonked kind of immediately. Did that thing where you wake up, head tilted back, mouth wide open, potentially drooling everywhere, a snack and water in front of you that clearly came while you were asleep, which is nice. Waking up to food is a rare thing any time. Made it down to Melbourne, had a bit of an issue getting the van as the company hadn’t noted a few pretty glaring bits of damage and took their time rectifying that. I’m still kinda nervous about it but we’ll see. Haven’t had an angry phone call yet.

We had a fair bit of time before we had to be at the venue so we went to the hotel, dropped our things and went out to the city to get some food. Otto (I think?) recommended a ramen place they’d been to before which was a 10 metre walk to the venue so we went there. I had a Ramune drink which I guess is a Japanese flavoured soft drink that wasn’t quite lemonade and wasn’t quite soda water but was somewhere along the lines of each. The coolest part was you had to ‘pop’ it open by taking a plastic cap thing, putting it on top and kind of hitting it as hard as you could to puncture some kind of seal and release a little glass ball that sat in on a shelf inside the bottle. The ball would then roll around and kind of block the mouthpiece while you drank, I guess so you didn’t spill any or drink too much at once. It also meant you couldn’t finish the drink as the ball would make it to the mouthpiece before the last bits of the drink, but overall a 10/10 experience. The ramen was fucking delicious too. I’ve only recently come back from Japan in 2016 and more or less lived on ramen and sushi over there so I feel like my barometer for good and bad ramen is more accurate now, and this one was great. Nice crunchy seaweed, well cooked tofu, and thick, not too soft noodles. Great stuff.

Walked over to the venue in time for Underoath to be starting their fan meet and greet thing (some extra thing the fans could pay for to hang out with the band and take photos and get signatures and that kind of thing). This was usually our time to get our stuff setup onstage and be ready to charge through a soundcheck. So we did. Back on an Avid console for these Melbourne shows which was cool because I could just plug the show file I took from the Brisbane show into it and be halfway there before we even made any noise. Obviously I had to re-tune the main speakers for the change in room but things like dynamic processing and even some EQ decisions were REALLY close to what we did in Brisbane so soundcheck was done with pretty quickly. And thats a good thing for a band I’ve noticed over the years, a nice quick soundcheck means they can get back to either resting, drinking, or seeing friends that are in town. 

The show was really cool. 170 Russell is a club kinda venue, lots of neon lights around the place and a big dance floor area, intense LED lighting setup and LED screen behind the stage. Big D&B J-series (I think) PA which absolutely thunders in what is a relatively small space (low roof, underground venue type space I mean). The first night here was a sell out crowd which was 1000 people so it was pretty well packed by the time we finished, the guys played really well and it was generally well received.

At this point I had started to notice a bit of a pattern with the crowd each night: probably as a result of the type of show that Underoath are known for putting on and the type of music they play, they attract a particular type of crowd; one that wants to jump around and get rowdy and let out their frustrations through the music and get drunk and just let loose. So with a band like SMW who play a much more introspective, ethereal, airy, obviously instrumental and less aggressive style of music, the crowd response has been something like this: a lot of interest and good reception for maybe the first three songs (The Stars Are Stigmata, In Limbs and Bones, Emergent), then a bit of a wane with the next couple (Great Northern, Traced In Constellations), a bit more of a reaction to Keep Your Splendid Silent Sun, and back up to a solid response from the closer Something Like Avalanches (which is the set banger anyway, it will always get a good reaction regardless). Sleepmakeswaves tend to do a lot more headline shows than support shows so I can only imagine that for a band that is used to being able to control a crowd’s emotions so thoroughly just through the music itself (ignoring things like stage presence and banter and whatever else they do up there) it is quite a challenge to bust out what feels like a huge performance and have very little coming back from the audience. However the reviews that have been written of each nights performances have been absolutely glowing, giving SMW massive props amongst the tirades of love going towards Underoath, so there is definitely something for them to take away from what they are doing each night. Sick tour, having a blast.