USA - Kylie Minogue may finally be ready to conquer the United States, as she recently capped her first Las Vegas residency at the Venetian Resort’s new Voltaire venue. Tension, her 16th studio album released late last year, reached the number-one slot – her ninth LP to do so – on the heels of sell-out shows in London, Rabat, and Athens this year.
Kylie has toured 19 times since 1989, selling out arenas and stadiums globally. For much of that run she’s been accompanied on the road by DiGiCo, most recently with a Quantum852 console in her monitor world. That desk, piloted by IEM engineer Kevin Glendinning, was supplied by Solotech UK for her recent run of shows in Europe.
Glendinning, whose live-mix portfolio includes work with Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, and Mumford & Sons, among others, first encountered Minogue mixing her stage sound for broadcast fly dates, including her 2009 appearance on American Idol. It was a role he’d reprise occasionally with her over the next 15 years as other television opportunities arose, such as in May 2023 for Idol once again, and then later that year to mix monitors for her Las Vegas residency.
“Her main engineer and dear friend of mine, Matt Napier, was busy with other things at the time in 2009; both Kylie and Matt were based in London and I was in LA at the time, so I became kind of her West Coast engineer,” Glendinning recalls. “If she had to fly over and do one song at the CBS film set or something, it didn't make sense to fly Matt over, so I helped out years ago. Then, when they needed a monitor engineer for the Las Vegas shows, I got a call from management. It was like hearing from old friends.”
It turns out that both Minogue and Glendinning are also old friends with DiGiCo consoles. He’s been using them almost exclusively since he toured on Lenny Kravitz’s Love Revolution tour in 2008. “Kylie has been mixed on a DiGiCo going back years, and I wanted to keep it in the family,” he says.
For the Vegas residency, an SD12-96 was chosen, based on its compact footprint for the intimate venue, but the Quantum852 for the European shows came about in a somewhat more dramatic fashion (and very apropos for Minogue, whose stage shows include elaborate costumes and sets inspired by sci-fi films). “I wasn’t able to make DiGiCo’s 21st birthday party in London last year, so instead I had a friend who’s great with film and video technology create a hologram of me from my Los Angeles office to them for the celebration,” he says. “They were introducing the Q8 and that was my introduction to it. I asked James Gordon if he could get me one for Kylie’s next shows and he moved heaven and earth to do it.”
Glendinning was glad he did; the desk was everything he expected, and more. “What I really, really enjoyed, and the first thing that stood out to me, was the accessibility of whatever you’d like, wherever you’d like it,” he says. “I can keep Kylie’s things balanced over here and keep them in the up bank the entire time, and then have the band, and the guest artists we have come up, in their own sections. I can lay things out and structure the board in a way with excellent accessibility that is totally intuitive.
“The Q8 is a big console, but it feels like less of a computer and more of a classic mixing desk, which I think is the ultimate goal. Yes, they’re a terrific technology company, and I have always appreciated the sonics and the support from DiGiCo, but they also really deliver when it comes to what a desk should feel like.”
On the other end of the Optocore loop, Kevin Pruce has mixed Kylie Minogue’s vocals from front of house for 15 years, in a career that’s also spanned FOH stints with Björk, Madonna, Duran Duran, Lana Del Rey, and Tears For Fears. He’s been a Quantum338 fan ever since the desk was introduced at the 2020 NAMM Show.
Since then, he says, “I love it, it is my favourite DiGiCo console. For me, it is about the ergonomics of working quickly and efficiently on the surface. The screens are a great improvement and make working in bright light much easier. That the layout is similar to the SD7 is also a bonus: three screens and a master section, while Mustard and Spice Rack are great additions as well.”
