After 27 shows, Radiohead's 2008 World Tour was about two thirds over when the band came to Berlin. The last time they played in Berlin was the evening of September 11, 2001, which, as the band stated on stage, created a special bond between the city and them. The concert had been sold out immediately after the announcement, and most of the 20,000 people filling the venue had been following the band's appeal to use public transportation traveling to the concert and thus put less strain on the environment.

We met Radiohead's keyboard technician Alan 'Russ' Russell during some last-minute preparations for the show, where he gave some exclusive insights into the band's setup. Russ's workplace comprises an Apple Macbook Pro that sits on a rack of daisy-chained audio interfaces. The computer receives MIDI from two keyboard stations on the stage, operated by band members (and brothers) Jonny and Colin Greenwood. They play their parts on their respective controller keyboards and MIDI floorboards.

On his computer, Russ runs Kontakt 3 as the main instrument for all sample-based sounds in the show. Both keyboard stations are routed to Kontakt, with each song having it's own monolithic multi. "Kontakt is great to work with", says Russ. "It has allowed us to completely get away from all the frustration of hardware samplers. Editing and importing becomes quicker and easier, which allows the band to make changes or try new ideas without delay or fuss."

Russ switched Radiohead's setup to Kontakt during the preparation for the 2008 world tour. "The band wanted to replace some old hardware from previous tours and consolidate those sounds into one central system.

For the live versions of the songs on 'In Rainbows', I worked with Kontakt. I used material from the studio production, and I also adapted some sounds from the Kontakt library - the Crumar Orchestrator gets quite a bit of use. After that, I basically went through the entire Radiohead catalogue and converted all the old sample material for Kontakt. I sampled a few hardware instruments and created multisamples. It's just made the organisation of all the keyboard sounds so much easier."

During the show, Radiohead play all songs entirely live - no backing tracks or sequencers are used except for songs with a more electronic aesthetics, such as "15 Step", where synchronised percussive loops are triggered in real time by Colin and Jonny. In addition to playing sounds on Russ's computer via his controller, guitar and keyboard player Jonny Greenwood operates a mixture of analog devices and his own laptop running experimental patches in Max/MSP on his tech station on stage left. During the show, Jonny manipulates the synths and outboard devices by hand and foot.

Bass player Colin Greenwood uses more of a conventional setup for his keyboard parts, comprising a controller keyboard and floorboard. All the changes in sound selections during or in between songs are operated directly by Russ, including some sounds from Pro-53 and other software synthesizers.

Playing such a central part in the show, Russ's rig has to be entirely failsafe, which is why he runs a second rig with identical setup. He has a nice big "panic" switch to change over to his backup system in case of a failure. "I did have to hit this switch a couple of times during the tour," says Russ smiling, "but it's never been a problem with the software. Kontakt has proven to be very stable. In the few cases when my system crashed, it was always caused by hardware issues."

Text & photos: Florian Grote