When Dan Scantlebury took up the position as Head of Sound at Entec Live in 2019, one of his goals was to get the company onto Glastonbury’s coveted Other Stage at Glastonbury within five years. But he went one better … achieving that target in just four years.
Second only to the iconic Pyramid Stage in terms of prestige, The Other Stage, with its spectacular view over the Somerset Levels, is the one that techs love to play. According to Scantlebury, it was Entec Live’s past association with the Festival’s production manager Emma Reynolds-Taylor, that led to their engagement.
“We go back over 10 years and although Emma has wanted to get us onto one of the Glastonbury stages for a while, it’s never quite worked out,” admits Scantlebury. “But then The Other Stage suddenly came up and we were asked to quote.” Their carefully pitched proposal, went higher up the Glastonbury chain of command until it was rubber stamped.
He was acutely aware of The Other Stage’s enviable history. Formerly known as the NME Stage, its seminal early moment was in 1994 when it propelled dance into the mainstream (via Orbital) during the golden age of Rave. It was rebranded in 1997 and in 2015 the new Serious Stages flat roof structure, with a stage footprint measuring 20m high by 43m wide, went in. This enabled Entec Live to rig its premier d&b KSL system—an array which has been a continuous fixture since 2019. Nevertheless, Entec Live were determined to put their own unique stamp on it, and brought in freelance sound designer, Matt Grounds, with whom they have worked regularly in the past to optimise this asymmetrical and somewhat quirky site.
As important as delivering high energy within the sound field was preventing unwanted escape away from it. Abstracts, such as wind direction and humidity, can play a crucial role, and both Scantlebury and Grounds agreed that minimising offsite noise and avoiding encroachment onto other stages were critical factors. “This required a lot of planning in the system design, running it through d&b NoizCalc [d&b software] to minimise any problems offsite while ending up with a very high FOH audio level.
“NoizCalc enables you to obtain the topographical data necessary to design the PA system by putting in different environmental factors such as wind direction, humidity etc. It will tell you what the level is going to be in a particular location two or three miles away.”
Based on these modelling measurements, Matt Grounds was confident his design would meet all criteria in terms of quantities, time alignment and coverage.
“The main coverage area is approximately 200 metres at its widest, by around 140 metres at its deepest,” he noted. And while the main, side, and outer PA hangs, comprising KSL / SL subs comfortably embraced the entire width, it was left to the four delay towers—bearing d&b V-series, set in an arc—to immerse those in the sound field from the halfway point onwards. This, he knew would sonically satisfy crowds of up to 70,000-80,000 people.
Entec Live also had to be responsive to certain headliners’ rider requests. “We supply a flip flop festival system with two [DiGiCo] FOH consoles and two at the stage enabling bands to load their show files and do sound check while the other band is playing,” explains Dan Scantlebury. “All the headliners now bring their own consoles and touring packages, although some of the US artists ask us to provide them.”
And the roster of artistes performing were mostly A-listers from a disparate selection of musical genres. These ranged from Nigerian Afrobeats singer Wizkid, the Friday night headliner, making way for Lana Del Rey to take the top spot on the Saturday, while Sunday night saw Queens of the Stone Age, going head to head with Elton John on the Pyramid Stage.
So much for the hardware, but did the pedigree of the crew match that of the artists. You can bet it did, as Entec Live’s head of sound reflects. “Because of the kudos of the gig and the fact we had the budgets it was quite easy for me to book crew. The result was that we had a world class crew, with personnel who were touring monitor engineers quite happily working as stage techs for the weekend. Everyone was just happy to be there.” Matt Grounds agreed, adding that the quality of visiting personnel passing through had also been second to none.
He said his main priority had been to set the system up as one on which he would like to mix, and as incoming engineers would expect to find it.
Another notable achievement, he said, was being able to deliver punch consistently to the outermost reaches of the site. “That was because we had a good set of engineers coming through. In fact there wasn’t a time when it sounded anything other than great.”
While Grounds reflected on the sound, Dan Scantlebury cast a greater overview. “The Other Stage is just such an amazing structure,” he said. “I feel that stage should be a benchmark for how festivals should be run … from the rigging crew to the local crew to the lighting guys, staging guys to the caterers … all were second to none.”
In other words, the overall feeling was one of good vibes from the moment the curtain went up to the point where the whole army of techs broke camp at the finale.
Emma Reynolds-Taylor confirmed that it had been the right year to bring in Entec Live, and that this decision to take over the audio provision had been fully vindicated. “My main priorities with this booking—aside from the obvious, that the stage had to sound absolutely awesome and all our visiting bands treated really well—was that this contract went to an independent sound provider, who could not only deliver for the bands, but also be a good fit for our team.
“We’re all a super close-knit team across Pyramid and Other Stage, and I needed someone I could trust to handle things in the right way, with the right attitude and who I felt I could call on at any time of day and they would have my back all the way.
“Dan Scantlebury fits this bill 100% and delivered 110% on site and in prep. First year in and it feels like we’ve all been doing this together for years. The feedback from the Festival and the visiting bands was very positive and also from the rest of my production team. I really couldn’t be happier with the decision to bring Entec and Dan in for this project.”
Crew List
- Project Manager – Dan Scantlebury
- Assistant Project Manager – Tom Olorenshaw
- System Tech – Matt Grounds
- FOH Engineer – Alex Chapman
- Infrastructure Tech – Peter Eltringham
- Patch Tech – Colin Dunkerley
- Monitor Engineer – Barny Peplow
- Monitor Engineer – Colin Woodward
- Stage Tech – Craig Williams
- Stage Tech – Ed Hammond
- Stage Tech – Callum Room Stokes
- Stage Tech – Pip Giles
- Prep Tech – Myles Allcott
- Prep Tech – Josh Jones
KIT LIST
- Main PA – d&b KSL
- Delays – d&b V-Series
- Subs – d&b SL-Subs
- System Drive – DirectOut Prodigy
- FOH console – 2x DiGiCo SD10
- Mons Console – 2x DiGiCo SD12
- Mons system – d&b M4/M2
- RF – Shure AD4Q
- IEM – Sennheiser 2050
- Patch management – Vampire Squid
