Euphoria or despair - Low Festival 30th July 2022

 

Next up is a live recording of Editors playing Low Festival in Spain on the 30th of July 2022. It was aired on RTVE Radio 3 and, unfortunately for us, the broadcast slot allocated to covering the festival terminated during the final song which was Munich. So technically I can't offer you the full set, I'm afraid. Also, and very true to form, the station filled the space between the songs (and sometimes the actual songs themselves, like during Magazine for example) with chatter in an effort to deter the bootleggers. Thank goodness for that! We wouldn't want people being able to enjoy this stuff after the fact...

 

If that wasn't enough, there were two glitches in the stream that night, meaning there were two gaping holes in a couple of the songs. Not just a little pop or a click in the audio, two actual gaps that lasted about a second each. I've fixed them in the editing (how appropriate!) and you should get a smoother listening experience now.

I read a story years ago about the mixing techniques of Pink Floyd's errant former member Syd Barrett. If I remember this correctly, he would play the songs and then move all the sliders and dials on the mixing desk in a totally random fashion while he listened. Possibly after having ingested various recreational substances. This created the trippy, off-balanced sound palette that you sometimes hear on their records. It is my contention that Syd Barrett could very well have been in charge mixing of this radio broadcast. It's loud, then it's quiet. Compressed and then expansive. It's all in the foreground, then it retreats to the background. Occasionally the crowd can be heard, then they vanish etc etc.

 

It's not all negative, however. There are lots of spots during the set where you can catch things that would have otherwise been lost in the blend. The little effects on Tom's vocals (Violence...wow) and the guitars and keys (Blood), that piano-bleed between Racing Rats and Papillon, Ed's percussion during Frankenstein. Amazing stuff. You'll know the others when you hear them. 

The  running order includes all three new songs and once again, to my ears anyway, they all sound slightly different than the times they've been played before. The more they're tested out on the road, the more they drift slightly from their studio blueprint. Karma Climb has the two guitars intro but you don't get to hear because of the DJs talking. Heart Attack begins with that air-raid siren intro that even had the hosts wondering if this was actually the band starting up or not. As a prelude, it really sets a tone by intimating that something heavy is incoming. Finally, you're able to hear all the lyrics to Kiss really clearly here as well as some of the instrumentation that was lost in previous live mixes. A good but often wacky job by Radio 3 on this one.

 

Enjoy the music ;)

 

stream it here

Broadcast Setlist

Heart Attack (with fade-in intro)

Racing Rats

Papillon

Frankenstein

Magazine

Karma Climb

Violence

An End Has a Start

Blood

Kiss

Sugar

Smokers

Munich

 

brought to you with lots of lemming-love ;) x