Cover It Up helped transform the main Arena and the Pavilion areas of the venue into one of the biggest and most successful dance party events in the country, celebrating the start of a new decade with six action packed arenas and a dynamic line up of DJs and performers.
Cover It Up's main challenge with this one was to design and rig a sonic baffling system that would separate the sounds between the two principle spaces - the main One Nation arena and Hardcore Heaven - which were set up back to back in the NEC's Arena.
The client was primarily concerned about the potential bass seepage between the two arenas, but Cover It Up's Elliot Stennett reports: "I have worked on several acoustic management projects in the past, so I know the nuances relating to what frequencies can be contained with different types of fabrics at different angles and proximities."
They installed four staggered runs of 90ft wide by 15 deep layers of black wool serge in between the two areas, all on free standing pipes and stands. The One Nation DJ booth was built with a box truss surround, which was then dressed around the outside with three layers of heavy serge, the combination of which did the trick perfectly.
In Hardcore Heaven, Cover It Up also installed 150m of 12m drop black wool serge to close off all the seating, and in One Nation another 130m of the same fabric in 7m wide x 5m drop sections was utilised to produce the same effect.
They also draped and dressed around the perimeters of the event's other four rooms - all using the same pipe-and-drape system for rigging.
(Jim Evans)
