Verka Serduchka on Top of the World With Allen & Heath at Atlas Weekend

Held annually in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Atlas Weekend is the largest music and arts festival in Eastern Europe, attracting crowds of over 500,000 to the grounds of the Ukrainian Expocenter.

With the 2021 event held across 7 days, Ukrainian comedian and pop singer, Andriy Danylko – better known as his drag alter-ego Verka Serduchka who shot to fame in the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest – headlined the Thursday night, with rental company Ginza supplying dLive systems for both FOH and MON.

FOH engineer Andrew Zistan opted for a 36-fader dLive S7000 control surface, coupled with a DM64 MixRack, plus a 128-channel superMADI card for multitrack recording and UAD integration. In monitor world, engineer Pavel Mineyev utilised a compact dLive C1500 control surface partnered with a DM64 MixRack, as per the FOH system. Allen & Heath’s proprietary gigaACE protocol was used to facilitate an ultra-low-latency digital split via a pair of gigaACE cards, with 128 channels of 96kHz audio running between the systems.

“I’ve been mixing on dLive for 4 years. It’s the most flexible solution to date with excellent ‘analogue-style’ sound and features” explains Zistan. “For the Verka Serduchka performance, I made good use of the onboard DEEP compressors such as the OptTronik, Peak Limiter 76 and Opto. I’m also a fan of the Dyn8 multiband processor and the Hypabass FX unit”.

After Atlas Weekend drew to a close, Zistan invested further into the dLive ecosystem. “With the purchase of 32 channels of PRIME preamps, I have taken my system to an even higher level of sound quality” he smiles.