Kylie - Showgirl 2005

Project Overview:

The Showgirl tour has been one of the most complex and challenging tours ever undertaken by the company. The requirements pushed technology to the limits but with the project co-ordinated by Paul Timmins and the 5-8 man Capital Sound freelance crew running the show the results were stunning. The Kylie camp has always placed the sound quality very high on the list and therefore relied on Capital to get the best possible results.

The showgirl tour began in mid January with two months of band rehearsals at Music bank with Rod Matheson (Kylies Monitor man),
a Digico D5 console, aviom monitor mixing system and all the bands radio IEM equipment and microphones. This gave time for Capital to build high
end antenna systems for the complex RF situation deployed on this tour.
In late February the FOH was introduced to combine with the arrival of
Chris Pyne (Kylies FOH engineer).

After the time in Music Bank the full sound production finally was unleashed on the production facility at Elstree. This consisted of a massive audio system hanging from 18 motors, with 4 more to come in Manchester and Earls court!

By mid March the tour was underway, the speaker system was now fully controlled via a wireless tablet running audiocore and 14 units of XTA DP226 to drive the entire audio system, 10 stationed at the stage and 4 FOH.

The biggest challenge for the tour was the 86-100 foot wide stage with main central thrust and B stage negating the possibility to fly central hung PA.
The design also had to have no ground PA (sub exception) to interfere with the clean sight and stage lines. Capital’s answer to this was requesting Martin Audio to design a down fill W8L cabinet to produce 60deg outside horizontal coverage with only 45 deg inside coverage and a vertical coverage of 20deg. The cabinets made production rehearsals in the nick of time and were under slung on the system to provide the ultimate answer! This system now looked very sexy indeed!

By the time the tour reached Earls court in early May it had completed no fewer than 6 nights in Glasgow SECC, 5 nights at the Point in Dublin,
6 nights at Birmingham's NEC, 5 nights at Manchester MEN arena and
a 2 week run around Europe completing 9 back to back arena shows with no fewer than 15 trucks! So the crew were looking forward to a 10 day run
in Earls court with 7 final shows. The Penultimate show in London was recorded and transmitted less than 24 hours later on Saturday May 7th through Channel 4 attracting 2.3 million viewers in the UK.

Directly after the show on May 7th the 8 man Capital crew and 2 sound engineers had the job to pack the entire control system separately to the speaker system as this was to travel direct to the airport for it's 12,000 mile flight to Australia for the start of the tour down under some 7 days later while the speaker system made it's first return to Wimbledon for some 10 weeks ready for it's next duty!

Client History:

Kylie has been with Capital Sound since 2001. Following Kylie's appearance at Party In The Park in 2000 Paul Timmins was approached by Production Manager, Steve Martin, to quote on the proposed Kylie Minogue tour for Mar/April 2001. Capital's quote was excepted and since the successful
'On A Night Like This' tour Capital has provided all sound for one-off events around the World and all audio services for Kylie's comprehensive touring in the past 5 years.

Quotes