Sunderland wanted to use a point source system because of the nature of venues the tour visited, which ranged from the 10,000 capacity SECC in Glasgow through to the 1,800 capacity Bristol Academy. "A line array system's dispersion just wouldn't work for these venues," says Sunderland. "In some of them you're right on top of the band and the stage, so a line array would have been too much of a compromise."
This is Aspect's first extended foray into "really loud rock band territory" as Sunderland puts it - the fact that the band's name is a homage to primal scream therapy gives an indication of its full-throttle approach - and it has proved to deliver the raw power such a riotous performance requires. "With this type of tour you need a lot of control," continues Sunderland. "Aspect is very much point and shoot and doesn't spill much onto the stage. With a very loud band such as Primal Scream, I need to use huge amounts of gain on the lead vocal and if I have a system that spills onto the stage it would cause problems with feedback. I don't think we had any of that on this tour."
Both the front of house and monitor system was Turbosound, with nine stacks of TA-890H/ TA-890L per side along with four TSW-218 subs per side running as a five-way system. Stage monitoring was via TFM-450 floor monitors with Floodlight for side-fill plus drum-fill subs and wedges.
"As this is such a highly directional system, we also had some TQ-440s for in-fills and/or out-fills as required," adds Sunderland. "Control is via XTA DP226s and DP428s and I'm using quite a lot of the digital EQ in the XTAs.
"I have been using the DP226s as crossovers for the main left and right stacks and the DP428s for the flown left and right cabinets. The whole PA is EQd around the lead vocal. It's a very old fashioned approach, but you have to do it this way with a loud band. The source material isn't immaculate and we've done some dodgy sounding rooms. To do that you need a mountain of EQ, which you can do in the crossovers without any phase shift."
Sunderland has used Aspect twice before this tour: at the main stage at Roskilde; and then again supporting the Who in Hyde Park. "I'm getting to like it more, the more familiar I become with it, and potentially it's a very good system," he says.
"Aspect has worked extremely well on every tour we've used it on in the six months we've had it," adds Britannia Row's Roly Oliver. "It has handled a variety of musical styles and venues very well."
(Chris Henry)
