[ATTACH=JSON]208531.vB5-nodeid=208531[/ATTACH]The end of September 2017 saw electronic music icon Excision launch his first music festival, Lost Lands. Over 3 days, Lost Lands brought the historic Legend Valley in Ohio to life with PK Sound’s Trinity – the world’s first and only advanced robotic line array. Lost Lands did not disappoint, delivering one of the best musical experiences of 2017 which PK Sound was thrilled to be a part of.
Excision (Jeff Abel) has been dropping beats since 2004 and has been an honorary member of the PK Sound family for over a decade. Hailing from British Columbia, Canada, Excision is a major player in cultivating bass music globally, with his passion for production driving him to inject his trademark sound into the rapidly growing electronic music scene.
Well known for the high level of production quality that he brings to his live shows, Excision and the Lost Lands festival saw no exception to this precedent. The Lost Lands team treated festival goers to an immersive, larger-than-life sensory overload with mind warping visuals, clean, powerful bass, and of course, a family of life-sized dinosaurs around the grounds to help everyone embrace their wild side.
But the event wasn’t always intended to be the massive monster it became. “The scale of Lost Lands started out a lot smaller, we were initially hoping for 10,000 people, but when we went on sale and sold nearly 20,000 tickets in the first 48 hours we realized that not only was demand far greater than we thought – so were the expectations,” says Excision.
“I think the biggest key to our success was that we literally threw our entire plan out the window that day, 2 days after launching, and started over from scratch, with the goal of making it the best possible festival we could.”
This required an equally massive sound experience which was provided across two stages by PK Sound. Stage one, also known as the “Prehistoric Paradox” stage, deployed the powerful Trinity line array the main hangs consisted of16 modules per side, as well as an individual hang of 12 modules to fill the VIP section. Additionally, the PK team deployed 12 ground-stacked VX-10 line array modules for on-stage out-fill (6 per side), 8 VX-12 line array modules for front fill with field delays consisting of 16 additional Trinity modules, 8 per side.
The only way to compete with that much line-array is to also bring an equal amount of low-end, which Pk Sound most certainly did. The 78 [URL=”https://www.pksound.ca/products/cx800″]CX-800[/URL] subwoofers stayed true to form and kept the festival goers head-banging all week long. Only partial cardioid deployment was necessary to control the sound field off axis at the Lost Lands festival grounds at Legend Valley. On stage monitors consisted of 4 [URL=”https://www.pksound.ca/products/vx10″]VX-10[/URL] line array modules (2 per side), 2 [URL=”https://www.pksound.ca/products/cx800″]CX-800[/URL] high powered subwoofers (1 per side) and 6 SW-215 stage wedges.
Not to be outdone by the Prehistoric Paradox stage, the Cave of Souls stage was located beneath a massive festival tent structure which housed two main hangs consisting of 24 Trinity line array modules (12 per side). Main front fills consisted of 4 VX-12 line array line array modules which was all balanced with a smaller, albeit equally rocking configuration of 42 [URL=”https://www.pksound.ca/products/cx800″]CX-800[/URL] high powered subwoofers. The stage monitor set-up consisted of 4 VX-12 (2 per side) with an addition of 2 [URL=”https://www.pksound.ca/products/cx800″]CX-800[/URL] (1 per side) for the low-end. In order to provide an accurate sound experience for the performers, 6 [URL=”https://www.pksound.ca/products/klarity-12″]KLARITY-12[/URL] speakers were utilized as stage wedges for the downstage mix.
With a huge line-up of international EDM heavyweights, how could Lost Lands not become the mother of all bass festivals? Joining Excision’s prehistoric party were Zeds Dead, 12th Planet, Cookie Monsta, Destroid, Ephwurd, Funtcase, Ghastly, Herobust, Illenium, Kill The Noise, Liquid Stranger, Rezz, Slander, and Snails. However, it was the legendary B2B set by Excision himself and Datsik that really stole the show.
Helping to unleash an epic festival experience to the fans was Excision’s multi-million-dollar sound and light stage design, Paradox, which includes the Trinity robotic line array system which is able to sculpt the sound field in 3 dimensions from front of house. This 3rd surprise pop up stage only served to further cement Lost Lands into music festival legend.
“The sheer power of Trinity is mind-boggling,” says Lost Lands second stage FOH System Tech, Kyle Pace, “The design is flawless and it actually feels and looks like it’s built to push limits.”
“A great aspect of Trinity is the control you have over your horizontal directivity while the array is in the air,” Kyle continues, “Being able to change from 50-degress to 120-degrees mid show or in any tight situation gives the engineers on site unlimited capabilities.”
For a festival of the size of Lost Lands, Trinity was the system of choice, equipping the team with the tools they needed to dial the sound in with a high degree of accuracy. The result was clean, powerful bass, with crisp, full mids and highs, as well as focused sound throughout the whole area.
“The fact I could carve the audio asymmetrically off the walls in the AG Mega-Structure was incredible,” says Kyle, “Focusing the top boxes in to 60-degrees symmetrically gave me tons more horsepower in the far field.”
“Being able to steer the sound waves with PK’s moving line array allowed us to tune the sound to near perfection,” says Excision, “The cardioid setup on the subs allowed us to pound the music without pissing off neighbours to the rear!”
One of the main challenges faced by Excision and the festival audio techs was ensuring they were able to abide by strict sound levels outside of the venue, while not sacrificing the quality and depth of the sound coming from the stages.
“Working with a company like PK who is focused on delivering the best possible sound for the venue regardless of how many speakers are required fits perfectly with our vision for Lost Lands,” says Excision.More testament of Trinity’s sound sculpting technology comes from Kyle: “I loved how the directivity of the sound was so precise with Trinity. We were able to go through the event without any complaints, even though we were hitting some high SPL levels.”
The whole PK Sound team were incredibly proud to witness Excision’s first successful foray into the festival world. It’s great to see the Trinity system at the helm of such a powerhouse event, being pushed to new levels and consistently excelling in delivering the highest quality of sound.
PK Sound’s Trinity system and Paradox delivered the force and fervour Excision needed to bring his creative vision for Lost Lands to life. We can’t wait to team up again for Lost Lands 2018!
