BIRMINGHAM, U.K. – Cover It Up helped the Slammin' Vinyl NYE-NEC DJ dance party take place in the main arena and the pavilion areas of Birmingham's NEC. The main challenge was to design and rig a pipe and drape system that would serve as a sonic baffling system, separating the sounds between the two principal spaces. "I have worked on several acoustic management projects in the past, so I know the nuances relating to what frequencies can be contained with different types of fabrics at different angles and proximities," said Cover It Up's Elliot Stennett.
The client was primarily concerned about potential bass seepage between the main One Nation arena and a second one, Hardcore Heaven, which were set up back to back in the NEC's arena.
The solution came in the form of four staggered runs of 90-foot-wide-by-15-deep layers of black wool serge drapes between the two areas, all on free standing pipes and stands. The One Nation DJ booth was built with a box truss surround, which was then dressed around the outside with three layers of heavy serge.
In Hardcore Heaven, Cover It Up also installed 150 meters of 12-meter drop black wool serge to close off all the seating, and in On Nation used another 130 meters of the same fabric in a seven-meter-by-five-meter drop sections to produce the same effect.
The crew also draped and dressed around the perimeters of the event's four other rooms, all using the same pipe-and-drape system for rigging, and using a total of nearly a kilometer of black wool serge drapery in all.
The crew of eight completed the job on the day before the party, which ran from 8 p.m. on Dec. 31 to 6 a.m. on New Year's Day.
Cover It Up has an ongoing relationship with Slammin' Vinyl and works on all their large live events. The last one was the 12,000 capacity Westfest, staged at Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet – the largest indoor dance event staged in the U.K.
For Westfest, Cover It Up sent 14 crew members and at least three kilometers of black drapes, including over 200 drapes measuring 30 feet by 40 feet, plus other soft goods used to dress all six arenas and the VIP chill zone That event required six days and seven cherry pickers to completely drape out all the various arenas and marquees, the largest of which was the 60-meter-by-11-meter Main Stage arena, with a total capacity of 5,000 people.
For more information, please visit www.cover-it-up.com.
