Meyer Sound News : Having a Bloc Party with MILO and MICA

Having a Bloc Party with MILO and MICA

"The Brixton show was great, nothing but compliments. Great vocal sound, but even more noticeable was the weight on the snare and the clarity from the bass. The MICA and MILO couple together beautifully. I'm really looking forward to playing the larger venues, where the full rig can do its stuff."

- Pete Bartlett, FOH engineer, Bloc Party

London art-rock quartet Bloc Party recently celebrated their meteoric rise from obscurity to Mercury Music Award nominees at the Carling Academy in Brixton, along with 5,000 of the band's "closest friends." The band hosted the gathering as a prelude to a series of larger shows in Europe, including dates in France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.

Audio for the tour is being overseen by Paul Timmins, project manager at U.K.-based Capital Sound Hire. FOH engineer Pete Bartlett mixed the show at the venue, formerly known as the Brixton Academy, a mid-sized but acoustically challenging room, utilizing a Meyer Sound system featuring MILO high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers and MICA compact high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers.

"I first encountered the MILO system at a couple of shows in Austin (Texas) and Atlanta (Ga.) earlier this year, and was quite impressed," Bartlett remarked. "The system was deceptively powerful for its size, but the sound was smooth and articulate, very detailed." Impressed with MILO's performance, Bartlett specified a Meyer Sound system for the European tour.

The Carling Academy Brixton is well known as something of a challenge, being a relatively reflective room despite its smaller size. Bartlett went for a slightly smaller rig, utilizing 12 flown MICA and four groundstacked MILO cabinets per side. "Brixton is a notoriously tricky show," Bartlett explains. "It's hard to get any tight low end or any sort of even coverage in there, and people end up trying all sorts of interesting things. The hangs sounded fantastic – loads of lovely warm mids and lows, clear and clean right to the back door."

For the larger dates on the continent, Capital are expanding the system to include 17 MILO boxes per side, along with four MSL-4 horn-loaded long-throw loudspeakers and four UPA-1P compact wide coverage loudspeakers for frontfill.

"The Brixton show was great, nothing but compliments," Bartlett concludes. "Great vocal sound, but even more noticeable was the weight on the snare and the clarity from the bass. The MICA and MILO couple together beautifully. I'm really looking forward to playing the larger venues, where the full rig can do its stuff."

December, 2005