If it’s true that there is no history, only autobiography, the UK’s Depeche Mode wrote its own songbook on the wings of electronica, influenced in measures by techno-pop, new wave, and various shades of avant-garde, industrial rock, and even a little heavy metal.
The band’s sound is rich, varied, atmospheric, and contextually deep. Bringing it to life on this year’s Global Spirit Tour, which launched back in May and will conclude in March next year with a final stop in Brazil, has been an unerring episode played out nightly in front of multi-generational fans hooked on an incredible legacy as well as the music itself, which has sold over 100 million records worldwide.
With Britannia Row Productions (Twickenham, UK) serving as the tour’s sound company of record, front of house engineer Antony King presides over a sprawling control landscape that incorporates dual Solid State Logic L500 Plus digital consoles. His counterpart, monitor engineer Sarne Thorogood, pushes faders from behind a Midas PRO X and does his part to, as he puts it – using a phrase many impart jokingly (but probably actually embrace at least to some degree) – “make everything louder than everything else.”
Joining King and Thorogood on the Global Spirit Tour are crew chief Terence Hulkes and systems tech Richard Trowe. Following dates in late October in Portland and Western Canada, the show left for Europe with stops slated for Dublin, Paris, Moscow, and a host of other major cities.
Putting It Together
This time out Depeche Mode plays a heady mix of material from its latest album, Spirit, as well as a little of everything else from lesser-known cult favorites to covers like David Bowie’s “Heroes.” With founding members Martin Gore, Dave Gahan, and Andy Fletcher all onboard for the duration once again, drums are manned by Christian Eigner, while Peter Gordeno contributes keyboards, bass, and backing vocals.
The size and scope of the show are demonstrated by an input count balancing nicely at 100. Within that number, Eigner’s drum kit seems as if it has limitless free-ranging tendencies, sucking up 30 channels all by itself.
A trio of keyboards is kept at hand for Gordeno, and include a classic Moog that is used to build some of the band’s trademark bass lines. Fletcher brings two more keyboards to the mix, as does Gore, who also adds guitar parts via four outputs from his Kemper/Rivera amps.
Essentially inseparable for the last 25 years or so, at this point Depeche Mode and Britannia Row are as directly associated in the collective consciousness as Prestone and antifreeze.
Regularly finding itself around the world in stadiums and other leviathan venues, the tour turned to the Brit Row inventory for a global PA that arrived in the form of 14 L-Acoustics K1 boxes per side, each supplemented with four K2 down fills.
Fourteen more K1s plus six K2 down fills are deployed for side hangs, with four delay hangs rounding things out, each comprising 12 more K1s.
A solid low-end contingent comes courtesy of 46 KS28 subwoofers. A dozen of them are flown per side next to the K1s, and among the remaining count six stacks of three reside at the front of the stage in a sub-arc array.
Serving as front fills, three ARCS enclosures (also from L-Acoustics) are positioned atop the outermost KS28 stacks. Four more sets of two Kara boxes, each on the innermost KS28 stack, further bolster front fill needs.
