Multi-faceted dance pioneers Faithless have been celebrating their 20th anniversary
on the festival circuit ahead of a new album release (Faithless 2.0). Front of House
engineer Mark Kennedy has been working with the band for 19 years, and this year
he is doubling up by using the same rig and crew for Faithless Vocalist Maxi Jazz’s
new Band, Maxi Jazz and the E-Type Boys.

For this series of nearly 30 dates, Kennedy has chosen to use an SSL Live L500
console, supplied by Britannia Row Productions.

On the Faithless show, there are 56 inputs from the stage including feeds from a
large percussion section, standard drum kit, bass guitar, four sets of keyboards,
and three vocal mics. Kennedy calls it a ‘tricky’ mix. “People will walk on and walk
off throughout the show,” he explains. “They’ll walk off with the radio mic and put it
down and start chatting to people off stage, and that’s the least of your worries.”

“Sister Bliss likes all of her keyboards to be velocity sensitive, so depending on
what mood she’s in we can go from a whisper to a scream. You have to be so on
the whole thing all of the time,” he said.

“In an analogue mixer, with a fader at five or eight dB down, the channel is quiet
but doesn’t drop out of the mix. With most digital consoles that channel would be
gone, but that doesn’t happen with the SSL, it stays there.’

Because the Faithless show is so unpredictable, Kennedy is hands-on from beginning
to end: “I use snapshots to get me to the starting point of a song. After that it’s
mixed freehand.”

The L500 has several control options – three Fader Tiles, a 19-inch multi-gesture
touch screen, and the unique Channel Control Tile with its own high-resolution touch
screen and rapid access controls. “The main touch screen is fantastic,” says
Kennedy, “But for me the key is the right hand side of the desk – the smaller touch
screen and the instant access of the Channel Control Tile. It’s so fast. I can jump
from my inserts, to my compressor, to my gates, to my header amps… There, now
– right now… I don’t have to go looking for them.”

The final words on the tour’s sound go to Rollo Armstrong, Faithless multi-
instrumentalist, Producer, and SSL studio console owner: “It sounds so much better
than it’s ever sounded before. We’re really happy.”