Thunderclap Murphy brings the speakers, instruments, lighting and cabling, and a crew of three sets them up.
From your venue, the crew needs a clear space, ordinary wall sockets and an hour before doors. Everything leaves again the same night.
He comes back within the week with a plan and a fee.
Equipment that travels with the performance
- Four matched active speakers, RCF ART 910-A or an equivalent, one at each corner, so the audience sits inside the sound.
- A table of instruments at the performance position, with flute, saxophone, guitar, kalimba, glockenspiel, synth, recorder, wooden whistle, melodica and rainstick.
- A laptop, a rack-mounted digital mixer, two foot controllers and two controller keyboards for the live looping, with a separate feed to each speaker.
- Soft uplighting and low staging, set to the space.
- All cabling, matting and tape.
- A crew of three, one each for systems, staging and lighting, and speakers and power. A reduced configuration runs with one crew member.
What the crew needs from the venue
- A space with seating or floor space for the audience.
- Ordinary 230V wall sockets.
- Access about an hour before doors, and a route to carry the equipment in.
Setting up on the day
Load-in to sound check takes 45 to 60 minutes, with the crew working in parallel. The sound is run from the central position, so venue staff have nothing to operate.
The crew packs everything down and takes it away the same night.
Cable safety
Cable runs go around the edge of the space, out to the speakers.
- All cabling is supplied and run along the walls, away from walkways.
- Every point where a cable crosses a walkway is matted or taped down.
- A clear route through the space stays open for the whole performance, including the breaks.
- The crew walks the space with venue staff before doors and again at pack-down.
Performance length
A concert runs ninety minutes, in three sections of about twenty-seven minutes, with a five-minute break between each. The Ambient Book Club runs two hours.
Thunderclap Murphy performs solo, playing and looping every layer live. The loops run at different lengths, so they drift out of step as they repeat.
The music sits low and moves slowly, below the level of a conversation, and the audience is free to sit, lie down, read, or come and go.
Shorter and longer bookings are agreed at the time, from a one-hour daytime session on a library reading floor to a piece running across a day. You can hear a full performance before you decide.
Filming at the performance
Filming is agreed with the venue before the date. The crew records the performance for the Thunderclap Murphy archive, and any photography of the audience follows the venue’s own policy.
For the venue’s technical staff
The rider carries the stage plan, the instrument and input list, speaker positions, power, crew roles, timings and the safety notes in full.
Download the technical rider (PDF)
Planning a date
Speaker positions, the length of the performance and the cable routes are all set to the space. Describe the space and name a date, and the plan and the fee come back within the week.