Influential British electronic dance act Underworld has chosen a Solid State Logic
L500 as performance tool for its live tours. The console joins founder-member Rick
Smith on stage as a fast, versatile, creative instrument, allowing him to combine
old-school dub mixing techniques with the best in performance technology.
It has been 20 years since the original release of Underworld’s ground-breaking
album dubnobasswithmyheadman, and the anniversary was marked with a
remastered release, accompanied by a tour that showcased the band’s legendary
live work. For this and the subsequent global festival tour founder member Rick
Smith’s new instrument of choice was an SSL L500 console, allowing him to
combine old-school dub mixing techniques with the best in performance technology.
To Smith, live performance is about: ‘Being in the moment and having absolutely
no choice about that fact… Whatever your state of mind is, this is it… This is the
moment that matters.’
To bring the “moment’ to the audience and shape the Underworld sound, Smith uses
a wide variety of dynamic mixing techniques – cuts, solos, automation snapshots,
faders, effects, and so on: ‘It’s about deconstruction and construction and
reconstruction and rearrangement,’ he explains. ‘That to me was always the best
kind of dub, that so excited me back in my twenties.’
Smith was heavily influenced by the reggae /dub genre and saw a link between that
and the output of early electronic acts like Kraftwerk. He developed this crossover
in Underworld and as such, the mixing console is an intrinsic part of the
performance.
The L500 has a number of operating options, including the main touch screen, the
fader tile encoders, and the channel control tile. Smith chooses to work with “all of
the above’, noting that the experience can be different for everybody.
In the difficult stage environment, the L500’s exceptional display quality is also of
great value to him.
Smith can spend anywhere between six months and a year preparing for
Underworld live shows, and he was as careful in choosing the console as any
professional touring musician would be in choosing their instrument.
Recently upgraded to the new V3 “Plus’ software, the L500 will be shaping
Underworld’s sound for some time to come. Smith: “It’s taken me probably about
seven or eight years to make any fundamental change to our live set up and here is
this thing which is at the heart of it now… The potential of it is as important to me
as what we are actually doing right now.’
Rick Smith is now exploring using the L500 in his studio set up.
