On the heels of sold-out shows in London, Rabat, and Athens, 2024 saw Kylie Minogue finish her first Las Vegas residency to begin touring globally for Tension, her 16th studio album. On the road with the ‘Princess of Pop’ is DiGiCo’s latest flagship console, the Quantum 852.
This year, Kylie Minogue was named one of Time magazine’s “most influential people in the world.” The vocalist/actress is the highest-selling Australian female recording artist, having sold over 80 million records worldwide. A two-time Grammy Award winner and four-time Brit Awards winner, she has toured 19 times since 1989, selling out arenas and stadiums across the globe. For much of her 35+ years of touring, Minogue has been accompanied on the road by DiGiCo, most recently with a Quantum 852 on monitor duty, piloted by IEM engineer Kevin Glendinning.
Glendinning, whose live-mix portfolio includes work with Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus, and Mumford & Sons, among many others, has been mixing monitors for Minogue periodically across the span of 15 years, including her 2023 Las Vegas residency. A seasoned DiGiCo console user, Glendinning has been using them almost exclusively since he toured on Lenny Kravitz’s Love Revolution tour in 2008. “Kylie has been mixed on a DiGiCo going back years, and I wanted to keep it in the family,” he says. For the Vegas residency, an SD12-96 was chosen, based on its compact footprint for the intimate venue, but the Quantum 852 for the European shows came about in a more dramatic fashion, as Glendinning explains:
“I wasn’t able to make DiGiCo’s 21st birthday party in London last year, so instead I had a friend who’s great with film and video technology create a hologram of me from my Los Angeles office to them for the celebration! They were introducing the Q852 and that was my introduction to it. I asked James Gordon if he could get me one for Kylie’s next shows and he moved heaven and earth to do it.”
“What I really, really enjoyed, and the first thing that stood out to me, was the accessibility of whatever you’d like, wherever you’d like it,” says Glendinning. “I can keep Kylie’s things balanced over here and keep them in the up bank the entire time, and then have the band, and the guest artists we have come up, in their own sections. I can lay things out and structure the board in a way with excellent accessibility that is totally intuitive. The Q852 is a big console, but it feels like less of a computer and more of a classic mixing desk, which I think is the ultimate goal. Yes, they’re a terrific technology company, and I have always appreciated the sonics and the support from DiGiCo, but they also really deliver when it comes to what a desk should feel like.”
Glendinning has been using the Quantum 852’s onboard Mustard and Spice Rack processing liberally, replacing all of what was once outboard gear. “Everything is on the console, everything is onboard, and it has all been outstanding,” he says. “They’re in love with the ’verbs on the acoustic guitars and on the vocals. I don’t want to mention any names, but she had a very exotic, very high-end reverb unit that I simply just replaced with the stock vocal plate on the console. The processing has been terrific.”
On the other end of the Optocore loop, Kevin Pruce has mixed Kylie Minogue’s vocals from Front of House for 15 years- in a career that’s also spanned FOH stints with Björk, Madonna, Duran Duran, Lana Del Rey, and Tears For Fears. Pruce has been a Quantum 338 supporter ever since the desk was introduced at the 2020 NAMM Show:
“I love it, it is my favourite DiGiCo console. For me, it is about the ergonomics of working quickly and efficiently on the surface. The screens are a great improvement and make working in bright light much easier. That the layout is similar to the SD7 is also a bonus: three screens and a master section, while Mustard and Spice Rack are great additions as well.”
Glendinning says the core mechanics underpinning his and Pruce’s praise for the consoles has been about the system’s consistency from each generation of product to the next. “DiGiCo has been part of the Kylie ‘sound’ for years- for decades now. From SD to Quantum, I can plug a show file in and be ready to work anywhere, and the artist will have a familiar sound signature and relevant mix balance. That’s the real accomplishment.”
