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Eighth Day Sound delivers audio solutions for Dizzee Rascal’s “Boy in da Corner” 20th anniversary tour

Eighth Day Sound was the vendor for British grime MC and rapper Dizzee Rascal’s recent UK tour which hit several arenas following a major comeback at London’s O2. Choosing Eighth Day Sound and mixing Rascal’s hard-hitting yet melodic blend of London hip hop, is FOH Engineer Wayne “Rabbit” Sargeant, who has navigated the artist’s live work on and off the road.

“Over the years, I’ve mastered some of Dizzee’s earlier album live tracks. So, my aim here was to bring consistency to the overall range of tracks spanning the 20th anniversary”, he explains. Sargeant has a Solid State Logic Live 100 for the main mix, while the DJ setup is processed through a Solid State Logic Fusion to add some weight and tame the high frequency, allowing the D&B Audiotechnik KSL PA system to sound vast at a lower level.

Rascal’s vocals are processed with an Empirical Labs EL8 Distressor. “I also add a very short reverb from a Bricasti M7 to soften and help sit the vocal”, says Sargeant. “The vocals are also sent to a stem, which is used as a side chain into the master bus multi-band compressor. It dips the mid-range pocket for the vocals to sit in the master mix, with the final mix going to the SSL Bus+.”

The team were met with some acoustically challenging venues, and with that in mind, asked Eighth Day Sound to supply a D&B KSL rig. “From tailoring the PA system and making it work for our needs and our budget, Eighth Day provided a truly great service”, says Sargeant who credits Systems Engineer Eddie O’Brien with developing a “perfect outcome”.

Monitor Engineer Edd Slaney was charged with both monitor duties and the DJ set-up, inadvertently assuming the role of show caller. “For that reason, I’ve always asked for great techs to come with my kit”, he explains. “I need a second set of eyes with me while I’ve got my head in one system or another. Liam Halpin looked after me for this run and was awesome as always.”

Rascals’s monitoring preference is the Shure PSM1000 IEMs with D&B M2 wedges, alongside Sennheiser 6000 Series RF mics, and Slaney’s desk of choice is a DiGiCo SD5. “This show requires much more than our normal festival set-up in terms of comms and matrix requirements”, he says. “The mixes for the performers on stage aren’t overly complex, so I’m able to use Dizzee’s tours to try out combinations of kit to establish what I do and don’t like.”

Tommy Sheals-Barrett of Back On Your Heads was the Production Manager on this tour.

(Photos: @lili_takesflickis)

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