The Rabbit Hole's Funkingham Palace - Glastonbury
Every five years, the Glastonbury festival takes a break. It's the "fallow year" which allows the ground to recover, Michael Eavis and family to enjoy a holiday and gives the local community a sigh of relief from the masses of festival-goers.
We did hear that the Glastonbury experience is at its best the following year, and our return at the Rabbit Hole's Funkingham Palace in 2019 proved to be just that.
The carefully crafted line up included old and new friends: Carl Cox, Greg Wilson, Bushwaka, Isaac Ferry, Hugo Heathcote, JFB, Late Night Tough Guy, Algy Strutt, Craig Charles, Heidi Lawden, Lovefingers and Sova Audio's very own George.
This year we added a TiMax processor for audio immersion and spatialization of sound to our 360 Funktion One setup. To match the dancefloor experience, we installed a 4-point monitor system, so that the DJ's can get the same dynamically spatialised audio mix. Using the TiMax OSC integration, we programmed various spatial sound movements controllable from an iPad for the artists to play with.
"A full-tilt dancing space with a delicious sound, courtesy of Sova Audio’s 4-point system, and an ever on-point DJ line-up." - Greg Wilson
Here's DJ and Funkigham Palace programming guru Isaac Ferry with a bit more detail on using our immersive sound system:
"Over the Glastonbury weekend, the DJs performing at The Rabbit Hole's Funkingham Palace had the pleasure of using the Timax technology in conjunction with Sova Audio's 4-point sound system.
Sova Audio created a submix where we could send certain sounds around the room to add drama to the audio mix.
It was amazing to use, and it really added something special to a magical weekend.
Using the AUX send function on the DJM 900 Nexus 2 we could assign any audio channel to be sent to RMX 1000.
This meant we could EQ out the bass, add delay to the track and send this delay around the room at various speeds - blended in with the original Dry track from the mixer.
"Tonking sound system!" - Carl Cox
We had an extra mixer that was basically used for effects and additional sounds. On this, we had 2 Korg Kaoss Pads, a Kaossilator, a laptop running samples from Ableton and a drum pad - all occasionally warped out through a Roland Space Echo. It was fun to create strange sounds in our headphones - and then throw them around the room via the Timax.
It really wonked out some already wonky characters on the dancefloor!"
Among all the positive feedback we received from the artists, were Carl Cox's words - "Tonking sound system"! Greg Willson wrote in his blog: "A full-tilt dancing space with a delicious sound, courtesy of Sova Audio’s 4-point system, and an ever on-point DJ line-up."
The Rabbit Hole got featured at the industry-leading TPi magazine as one of the highlights of Glastonbury 2019. Read the article here:
Photos by Alex and Tzveti