International. It's been a while, but Kylie Minogue may finally be ready to conquer the United States, as she recently wrapped up her first Las Vegas residency at the Venetian Resort's new Voltaire venue.
Tension, their 16th studio album released late last year, reached the No. 1 spot (their ninth LP to do so) after sold-out shows in London, Rabat and Athens this year.
The Australian singer, actress and presenter has won two Grammy Awards and four Brit Awards, holder of the Order of the British Empire of the United Kingdom (and her Australian counterpart), this year she was named one of the "most influential people in the world" by Time magazine and has toured 19 times since 1989, filling arenas and stadiums around the world. For much of that race, she was accompanied on the road by DiGiCo, most recently with a Quantum852 console in her monitor world. That table, piloted by IEM engineer Kevin Glendinning, was supplied by Solotech UK for their recent series of shows in Europe.
Glendinning, whose portfolio of live mixes includes work with Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, and Mumford & Sons, among others, met Minogue mixing her stage sound for broadcast dates, including her 2009 appearance on American Idol. It was a role he would occasionally reprise with her for the next 15 years as other television opportunities arose, such as in May 2023 for Idol once again, and then later that year to mix monitors for his Las Vegas residency.
"His lead engineer and dear friend of mine, Matt Napier, was busy with other things at the time in 2009; both Kylie and Matt were based in London and I was in Los Angeles at the time, so I became kind of a West Coast engineer," Glendinning recalls. "If she had to fly and do a song on the CBS film set or something, it didn't make sense for Matt to fly, so I helped out years ago. Then, when they needed a monitor engineer for the Las Vegas shows, I got a call from management. It was like listening to old friends."
It turns out that both Minogue and Glendinning are also old friends of DiGiCo consoles. He's been using them almost exclusively since he toured Lenny Kravitz's Love Revolution tour in 2008. "Kylie has been mixing in a DiGiCo for years, and I wanted to keep it in the family," he says. For the Las Vegas residency, an SD12-96 was chosen, based on its compact size for the intimate venue, but the Quantum852 for the European shows came about in a somewhat more dramatic way (and very appropriate for Minogue, whose stage shows include elaborate costumes and sets inspired by sci-fi movies).
"I couldn't make it to DiGiCo's 21st birthday party in London last year, so instead I asked a friend who is very good with film and video technology to create a hologram of me from my Los Angeles office for the celebration," he says. "They were presenting the Q8 and that was my presentation. I asked James Gordon if he could get me one for Kylie's upcoming shows and he moved heaven and earth to do it."
Glendinning was glad he did; The desk was everything I hoped for and more. "What I really enjoyed, and the first thing that struck me, was the accessibility of whatever you wanted, wherever you wanted," he says. "I can keep Kylie's stuff balanced here and keep it on the top bench all the time, and then have the band and the guest artists that we've created, in their own sections. I can organize things and structure the board in a way with excellent accessibility that is totally intuitive. The Q8 is a large console, but it looks less like a computer and more like a classic mixing console, which I think is the ultimate goal. Yes, they're an amazing tech company and I've always appreciated DiGiCo's sound and support, but they also really deliver on what a mixer should be."
Glendinning has been using Quantum852's built-in Mustard and Spice Rack processing generously, replacing literally everything that was once external equipment with it. "It's all on console, it's all integrated, and it's all been extraordinary," he says. "They are in love with the 'verbs' in acoustic guitars and vocals. I don't want to mention any names, but she had a very exotic and high-end reverb unit that I just replaced with the standard vocal plate on the console. The processing has been fantastic."
At the other end of the Optocore circuit, Kevin Pruce has mixed Kylie Minogue's front-of-house voice for 15 years, in a career that also spanned FOH spans with Björk, Madonna, Duran Duran, Lana Del Rey and Tears For Fears. He has been a fan of Quantum338 since the table was introduced, at the 2020 NAMM Show. Since then, he says, "I love it, it's my favorite DiGiCo console. For me, it's all about the ergonomics of working quickly and efficiently on the surface. Screens are a huge improvement and make working in bright light much easier. That the design is similar to that of the SD7 is also a plus: three screens and a master section, while Mustard and Spice Rack are also great additions."
Minogue occupies a unique niche in the world of entertainment, although, curiously, not in the United States. In fact, Minogue has only toured North America once: nine shows in the U.S. and Canada in 2009. Even Billboard scratched its head in 2002 as it wondered why its worldwide success wasn't matched in the United States, the world's largest music market. But that hasn't stopped Minogue, who has sold 80 million records worldwide, from reaching new generations of fans year after year.
It's the same thing DiGiCo has been doing. But for each new step and star in DiGiCo's lineup, Glendinning says the underlying narrative has been about the consistency of technology from each console generation to the next. "DiGiCo has been a part of Kylie's 'sound' for years, for decades, now," he says. "From SD to Quantum, I can plug in a show file and be ready to work anywhere, and the artist will have a familiar sound signature and relevant mix balance. That's the real achievement."
