Officially too cool for school, Alex Proud’s new venue in north London is an inventive and stylish addition to one of the city’s busiest districts for live music as well as a valuable exhibition gallery for photographic works, and a much-needed private hire space. Trendily labelled in lower case, at proud also manages to be a minor miracle of architectural restoration and a showcase for the latest audio technology – all at the same time!
Entrepreneur Alex Proud built his first Camden venue up as a gallery for photographic works. Located in the world-famous Camden Market, recent planning developments have compelled a move to new premises and he has set up his new venue at proud in a former horse hospital close by.
Once filled by horses injured by pulling the barges up the nearby canal, the Victorian building has lately been used by the market’s antique dealers. The at proud refurbishment has kept many of the original features, including the cobbled floors – the compartments of the original stables now house private booths, complete with horses’ water troughs.
The largest space in the new venue is the Gig Room, a gallery which transforms into a 500-capacity live music club in the evenings. With a central stage dominating the high-ceilinged room, sound designers SSE London have chosen to install NEXO’s new GEO S12 line array system, teamed with the very latest RS15 subs from the French manufacturer, all supplied by UK distributor Fuzion plc.
Powered by CAMCO and Yamaha amplifiers, the PA system uses left and right clusters of 4x GEO S1230 cabinets, arrayed horizontally. “In the short time since this speaker was launched by NEXO, we’ve been very impressed by it,” says Emma Barwell of SSE London, which installed some of the first S1230s into London’s Astoria club.
Because the venue functions as a photographic gallery by day, the brief called for a very unobtrusive PA system which could nevertheless provide the coverage and power expected by top bands. “In this respect, the horizontal array of the S12 Series was a big plus,” says Barwell. ““It has exceptional MF-LF output and is designed to be multipurpose with all the professional hallmarks of NEXO. Teamed with the new RAYSub bass cabinets, the results are fantastic!
“NEXO launched the new RS15 sub at just the right time for at proud. It’s a compact attractive subbass cabinet, which everyone seems quite happy to have sited at the side of the stage, and we are really impressed with it. Together with the S1230, it is a lot of system for a small room, but we wanted to overspecify a bit because of the calibre of acts they wanted to target, and because we didn’t want to see the system – which is on a long-term rental – being driven so hard that it might get damaged.”
Opening night for at proud meant a full house of invited guests, and performances by rapper Lethal Bizzle and cult rock band The Enemy provided the first public test of the new system. Front-of-house and monitor sound are controlled by a Midas Verona 480 analogue console, with SSE’s
proprietary MB4 wedge monitors on stage.
