With Number One hits "Whole Again" and "Eternal Flame" having brought their name to the fore, Atomic Kitten's short but sweet Right Now Tour (Part II) kicked off at Chavasse Park in the girls' hometown of Liverpool in April .
The unashamedly pop trio of Jenny Frost, Natasha Hamilton and Liz McClamon are clearly touting their wares at the lucrative 8-14 year old market, but they retain some credibility amongst the fans' parents by having a genuine and talented live band behind them. They're also not afraid to flex a little Scouse attitude now and again, which at the very least makes them appear human.

ALPHA SOUND
PA supplier Adlib Audio specified its newly-purchased NEXO ALPHA system for the tour. The system, powered by Crown amplifiers and controlled by NEXO NX241 TDcontollers, was flown two M3 speakers wide, and (normally) four deep, with two B1 basses per side. A further four M3s per side were installed in theatre venues to cover the downstairs stalls, as was the case at Hammersmith Apollo. On the floor there were four S2s per side and six B1s.
The crisp, tight sound of the music was largely down to fine musicianship (the band included Rick Wakeman's keyboard-playing son, Adam), but can also be attributed to System Tech Dave Kay's expert set-up. "Having a "clean" stage sound really helps, but the whole game at the Apollo is about zoning the speakers so that the amplifiers are controlling the gain of each pair of speakers dedicated to different areas of the room," said Kay.

"We're aiming to reproduce the best sound quality possible everywhere, from the balcony to the back of the stalls. We're using our own in-fill cabinets as well, which are the only mid-highs situated on the stage, so we're trying to cover as much as we can from the air. It's much easier to cover your audience from above than across them, and it also cuts down on reflections from the room.
Adlib had decided it needed to stock another loudspeaker system to mainly handle theatre venue work (see this month's Profile), and its choices were narrowed down to NEXO ALPHA and d&b.

FOH Engineer Andy Dockerty commented: "Conversations with Wigwam and SSE gave us the necessary background knowledge. We had done some projects with SSE which gave us some experience with NEXO, and at the end of the day we found that NEXO's distributor Fuzion was a lot more pro-active about doing business with us. In fact, they couldn't have been more helpful and we're very happy with the decision."
Dockerty's mixer was a Soundcraft Series Four which replaced the original Series Five. "This one does the job fine for me," he said. "The Four isn't the highest profile board around, but it sounds fine, and it also overcomes the space problem we might have had with the Five in some of the venues we've played. We have a couple of Series Fours, which we often specify for on-off shows-it has about 90% of the facilities in about half the footprint, so I can't argue with the choice here."

For further information:
info@nexo.fr