The Arcade Fire
MEN Arena, Manchester, UK
Saturday 27th October, 2007

Support Bands: Wild Light, Clinic (not recorded)


Lineage:

GreenMachine GM-Pro Mics
-> GM Battery Box
-> iRiver H120 (Rockbox v061206)
-> SoundForge (v8.0d) (trim WAV, fade in/out, normalise)
-> CDWave (v1.95.1) (tracking)
-> TLH (v1.0.0.72)
-> FLAC (level 8)
-> Foobar2000 (v0.9.4.2) (tagging)

Source: Audience recording from 2nd row,left of centre of the stage
Taper: PABBY
Duration: 1h 26m 53s
Size: 420 MB


Track list:

01. Black Mirror
02. Keep The Car Running
03. (Antichrist Television Blues)
04. No Cars Go
05. Haiti
06. I'm Sleeping in a Submarine
07. In The Backseat
08. Windowsill
09. Ocean of Noise
10. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
11. The Well & The Lighthouse
12. Still Ill (The Smiths cover)
13. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
14. Rebellion (Lies)
15. Encore break
16. Intervention
17. Wake Up


Notes:

SoundForge was used for trimming the start/end of the WAV, adding fade-in/out and normalising to peak value. No equalisation was performed as I believe in letting people with better skills than me make any necessary adjustments.

Like everyone else, I go to gigs to enjoy myself, but I also have one eye on ensuring my recording comes out at least on the correct side of average. I was positioned almost on the barrier at the front left of the stage and thought I may well scupper my chances of a good recording due to the buffeting I would undoubtedly receive from an enthusiastic crowd. Fortunately the crowd was pretty reserved where I was stood and there was only minimal surging during the livelier songs. The consequence of this is that the recording turned out very well indeed! There's obviously some crowd noise present, but nothing that should detract from your enjoyment of a great, great performance.

And what a setlist!!

I'm Sleeping in a Submarine and Still Ill (a cover of The Smiths, no doubt because they were in Manchester) were totally unexpected and were very well received. But the jewel in the crown was In The Backseat. The crowd were very respectful to this awesome song and Regine had tears in her eyes at the end of it. Win commented that there were 14,000 people in the Arena and that this was the biggest indoor audience that they had ever played to. Looking around during Wake Up and seeing those 14,000 people totally immursed in the occasion will live with me forever. To see what I mean, check out this rough and ready phone video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FIfnFPNrBE (courtesy of Diaji from UKK - cheers Andy).

I've said this before in an earlier recording, but if you haven't seen The Arcade Fire yet, do yourself a favour and make sure you catch them at the earliest opportunity. You won't be disappointed.


Links:

Official Band Website
http://www.arcadefire.com

Us Kids Know - the centre of the Arcade Fire universe
http://www.arcadefire.net

Show reviews and discussion
http://forums.arcadefire.net/viewtopic.php?id=13232