Photo above: Nigel Brizan running Kes’ FOH mix at House of Blues on a DiGiCo Quantum112
Since being formed in 2005, Trinidadian Soca group Kes have been elevated to mainstream popularity nationally and throughout the Caribbean diaspora thanks to their eclectic but smooth blending of R&B, pop, rock, EDM and reggae genres. Kes has also won several awards, including the 2020 International Soca Monarch and Road March titles. Touring internationally, the band is a regular on performance circuits throughout the Caribbean, but the most recent Roots Rock Soca tour, which last spring and summer took them up and down the east and west coasts of the US and Canada, and ultimately to their home turf in the Caribbean, saw them change a key element—not of their music, but of their logistics.
Longtime fans of DiGiCo Quantum desks, including the Quantum338 consoles they’ve had on tour before, this time they went with a pair of DiGiCo Quantum112 ultra-compact, flypack-friendly digital consoles. “It was a dream, man!” says Nigel Brizan, Kes’ longtime front-of-house engineer of the shift in logistics. “It was so easy to travel with, and it helped in my workflow—easy to set up, easy to break down—which put a lot of time back into production. I had the option of just going back to the hotel and programming my show in the room. The Q112 is small but very, very powerful,” he says of the desks, which were used at a diverse variety of venues ranging from The Bellwether in L.A. to NYC’s Forest Hills Stadium to Toronto’s RBC Amphitheatre.
The Quantum112 consoles were recommended and provided by New York-based Sky Event Technology, whose owner, Akash Ramjug, has worked with the band for the better part of a decade, providing audio and backline equipment. “They’re great consoles, like any DiGiCo desk, but the Q112 is so compact and lightweight that we can check it as regular luggage on flights,” he explains. “We flew them down the entire west coast, from Vancouver to LA, and then across the country, from Virginia Beach all the way up to Toronto, and then to Bermuda for a one-off event. The consoles were able to stay with us all the way.”
Ramjug says the usual logistical process of moving large audio consoles is both expensive and time consuming, particularly internationally. “I have shipped larger consoles down to the Caribbean many times, and it takes a lot of logistical effort to move those,” he says. “We would have to truck them down to Miami, then get them on a cargo plane, which would then bring them to the islands. But that takes up to a week because you have the ground transportation first and then the flight. For this tour, we were able to move these consoles much more quickly and efficiently. We just checked them in as though they’re luggage and then picked them up when we landed. So simple.”
FOH engineer Brizan says that with all of that efficiency, none of the Quantum112’s powerful suite of processing was diminished. He was able to use a full range of Mustard, Spice Rack and Nodal Processing, as well as the Waves bundle integrated into the desk. “It gives me the functionality of a much larger console, but in a much smaller form factor,” he says. “A lot of the shows are a day of loading and sound check and set up, and that can get complicated when you have to deal with different consoles. When you’re bringing your own console, it just speeds up the workflow, and the Q112’s compact size means that we can bring it everywhere. We’re very happy that Akash and Sky Event Technology introduced the Q112 to us. It’s now our go-to choice for travel. It’s the do-everything, go-anywhere console!”
And now Sky Event Technology’s compact consoles are even more full-featured thanks to DiGiCo’s recent Quantum112 Pulse upgrade, which Ramjug has already implemented, increasing his input channel counts to 96 and aux/subgroup busses to 48. “With the new upgrade, these little desks are so much more powerful, delivering the I/O and processing you’d normally only expect to find on DiGiCo’s larger Quantum consoles,” he says. “The Q112 Pulse really packs a stunning amount of muscle into its tiny-yet-mighty frame.”
For more information on Kes, visit www.kestheband.com. Sky Event Technology can be found online at www.instagram.com/skyeventtech.
