Pendulum – Strong Hire brave excessive decibel count in all-nighter at Brixton Academy.

Strong Hire’s final live recording outing of 2008 found us at Brixton academy, recording Aussie drum and bass act Pendulum for a live DVD release on Warner. After managing to squeeze past what looked like the largest PA system south London has ever seen, we set up camp back stage with our usual trusty set up of Pro Tools HD systems and Focusrite mic pre-amps.

Just before sound check, we were informed by some crewmembers that they’d previously attempted to record the shows from the front of house position, but the recording had dropped out because level of bass in the room was vibrating the

hard drives! On ‘experiencing’ the sound check we quickly heard how this might have been the case. A truly earth shattering sound! We took a bit of the ‘vibe’ and then promptly put our ear plugs back in and ran for the cover of our back stage room like a couple of cissies!

The evenings show proved to be a riotous, ear splitting affair and was straight away followed up with a 3 hour DJ set by drum and bass legend Grooverider, which if anything was even louder! With the show captured and backed up safely on master and safety systems (with no bass induced drop-outs), engineer Ade Pressley took the show away for the mix, and we all went home to listen to some DJ Hype over breakfast.