Written and recorded during lockdown, Inside, the eighth studio album from Canadian Alt-rockers Mother Mother, reflects the isolation of the time, yet conveys an infectious optimism. In support of its release, the band returned to the world’s stages with a tour of multiple continents over a 12-month period.
‘Not only was this our first tour back in over two years since this pandemic shut us all down, it was also our first time taking the dLive system out,’ says Tour Manager and FOH engineer, Andrew ‘Slipper’ Brown. ‘I am carrying my own CTi1500 Surface at FOH, along with a CDM48 MixRack and a Waves V3 card for multitrack recording and virtual soundcheck. On monitors, Ronan McAllister is using a C1500 Surface and a DM64 MixRack provided by PRG Toronto. We are doing a “traditional” gain share between FOH and monitors by way of a gigaAce card in each MixRack. We chose to go this route for the added redundancy with dual gigaAce lines between stage and FOH.’
The C1500 and CTi1500 are the two smallest Surfaces in Allen & Heath’s dLive range, finding favour particularly for fly dates, bus tours, support slots and applications where size and weight need to be carefully balanced against audio requirements.
The use of a compact dLive pairing for this tour was influenced by the vast, and sometimes sparse, geography of the band’s homeland: ‘Artists in Canada face some additional challenges compared to our southern neighbours when it comes to carrying dedicated production packages,’ Brown says. ‘When touring, we play fewer shows over much larger distances equating to higher transport and touring costs versus the number of shows performed over time. When I explored Allen & Heath’s product line, the dLive CTi1500 really struck me as a desk that would work well for me in the Canadian touring market.
‘Mother Mother is on a growth trajectory that has us working in a lot of different sized rooms, so keeping the audio footprint small was a major goal of ours from the get-go,’ he adds. ‘To be able to have the power that the dLive platform offers packed into one or two cases weighing less than 50lbs, I was immediately sold.’
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