UK: A selection of Avolites gear including Tiger Touch II and Expert Pro consoles with Titan Wings hit the slopes of Mayrhofen, Austria this April for the mountain-top mayhem of alpine music festival Snowbombing.
Known as the ‘greatest show on snow,’ the festival was a week-long whirlwind of world-class electronic DJs and bands, across seventeen venues in the magnificent mountain setting.
Stephen Abbiss got the party swinging for Fat Boy Slim on main stage, The Racket Club, using a Tiger Touch II and Fader Wing. The console was controlling a house rig featuring Sharpys, Robe 100 LEDbeams, Mac 700s and PC beams as well as Sunstrips and Atomics.
“I always use an Avo for Fat Boy Slim shows”, notes Abbiss. “The shows are so hands on, I need a desk with great live access.”
“We’ve got set looks for set songs which we try to do on the fly” Abbiss continues. “It was a bit more free-reign than normal. Norm threw in a whole load of new songs, which meant I could be creative. I used an extensive busking page.”
Abbiss, who also owns a Titan Mobile, which he uses for smaller shows and pre-programming was quick to praise the functionality of the updates to the cue stacking in Titan. “It works nicely,” he says. “Fixture exchange is further improved too.”
Outdoor shows on the Forest and Street Party stages featured drum and bass quartet Rudimental, Basement Jaxx and 2manydjs. For these events Colm Whaley operated an Avolites Expert Pro as the house desk.
Other Avolites equipment used on the festival included an Expert Pro on the Bruck & Stadl stage, operated by Jonathan Godsmark; a Tiger Touch and Mobile Wing on the Europahaus stage with Chris Sirey and Tim Hawes, and a Pearl Tiger at the Back Country Party, operated by Tim Hawes. All kit was supplied by Audile.
The company’s owner Bob Leach explains the rationale behind selecting Avolites for the festival: “A lot of the guys here are all very happy Avo users, they’re really great consoles for those festival busks and for other people to walk up and use them. For these reasons Avolites were the most suitable for the job.
Given the festival’s high-altitude location, they had to put up with the extremes of the alpine winter. “The consoles coped well with the extreme weather out there,” says Leach. “It was very cold with lots of heavy snow early on. It’s great that they can survive those sorts of conditions.”
“We had no performance issues,” he continues. “They all survived a very intense week, which is the same as you could say for the operators – just about!”
Avolites Managing Director Steve Warren jetted to Austria to join in the festivities, joined by Senior Software Developer Greg Haynes. Abbiss mentioned that “It was nice to see Steve and Greg enjoying themselves out of the office.”
“Audile were also very happy to have support from Avolites abroad” adds Leach.
Steve enthusiastically states “I have enjoyed many festivals but have to say the unique concept of snowbombing is hard to beat. We were proud to be working with Audile as Bob and his crew devoted their attention away from the boarding and partying and focused fully on delivering a stunning visual feast to the audience. The icing on the cake was Stephen Abbiss rocking in and producing a slick show for Fat Boy Slim, the most popular artist of the week!”