After a three-year break, Glastonbury Festival recently celebrated the return of their smaller-scale, one-day festival, Pilton Party. With tickets only available for sale in-person in Glastonbury town, the event takes place to thank the surrounding area’s locals and workers. After successfully providing the audio to this year’s Pyramid Stage, Martin Audio was called on again for the Pilton Party.
While being a much smaller event with one stage versus Glastonbury’s approximate 31 stages, it still takes place on Worthy Farm, in the area that hosts the John Peel Stage. Elbow, who performed on the Pyramid Stage this year, headlined Pilton Party, supported by Easy Life.
SWG Events service a number of stages at the main Glastonbury Festival, and they provided technical support for Pilton Party.
Both bands used Martin Audio’s WPL Wavefront Precision line array, the same PA system used on the Pyramid Stage this year. Emma Reynolds-Taylor repeated her role as production manager after overseeing Glastonbury’s main stage over the Summer.
Simon Purse, SWG’s head of audio, said of the speaker system: “We have now done so many shows this summer with the WPL system that sound engineers have built confidence playing through it, and have got used to the workflow.”
On either side of the stage, SWG flew 12 WPL elements, which they ran in 2-box resolution from their iKON iK42 amplifiers. Providing front fills were eight of their W8LM Mini line arrays, while 12 of their powerful Martin Audio SXH218 (2x18”) subs were designed in a monoblock across the front. They also provided eight of their new Martin Audio XE500 stage monitors for reference sound.
“The sub response was brilliant,” Purse said. “You could really feel it from the kick drum, and we achieved 100dBa at FOH, with no complaints. The field itself extended to 110m and WPL comfortably threw to the 90 metres necessary for the audience coverage area.”
Elbow’s front of house engineer, Danny Evans, had this to say regarding the Martin Audio PA: “There was plenty of headroom, with impressive clarity, and the coverage was good with consistent level and even tonality around the whole audience area. This allowed me to focus on, and enjoy mixing Elbow’s show.”
Reynolds-Taylor added: “When we were going over the specs with our supplier, SWG, to sign off on all the tech, I was happy to see they proposed this audio system, as we’re always really pleased with the results on the Pyramid Stage. We have a vast variety of acts, of all stages of their career, at Pilton Party, so I was really pleased.”