About Entec - the company
It’s quite simple. Entec are UK Music Business Aristocracy. We need to get this bit out of the way first as it’s the Elephant in the room.
Started way back in the mists of time, with the Marquee Club music venue as another part of the Entec legend, and factual Hit Factory Marquee studios as another, it’s the sort of company with a literally wonderful list of who’s who. (Like f’rinstance, The Who)
The Marquee Club itself saw the early gigs of so many rock and pop luminaries that the list of who didn’t gig at the Marquee is the only feasible one to create and you’ll only need one hand to count them on. One of those started up North in another club called The Cavern. And everyone, including Elton made chart hits at the studio.
The depth and breadth of Entec’s music business experience is unequalled.
And then there’s the TV stuff. As the fame spread and clever corporations wanted full-on rock concert lighting and sound rigs for their programmes and advertisements, Entec were called upon to learn about which PAR cans (lighting things) could be taken into TV studios and the whole gamut of the different culture of broadcast production. That led to Entec’s discovery by the corporate world.
Fast forward to today and you have a company with the most eclectic set of production skills in all Europe, let alone the UK. The word is out now, Entec can take your production idea, turn it into a system specification, add the top people to go with it, (should you need them) and give your show the same attention to detail and care as for a Rock God.
Concert Tours : Live Events : Corporate Shows : Exhibitions : Television : Theatre : Festivals : Branding : Sport : Equestrian : Military Bands : Religious Gatherings : Weddings : Birthdays : Bar-Mitzvahs : Wakes
Full Productions
It’s the most hackneyed phrase in this world of everyone thinking they can do everything but Entec are the definitive One Stop Shop. It’s not Tesco’s selling tellies, it’s sound, lights, staging and sets and then the trucks to put them all in, together with professional planning about what needs to be where and by when and how. You can do the production equivalent of being let loose naked with a credit card in the department store of your choice at Entec. Come in with an idea and a budget and be it a stadium concert tour or your daughter’s 21st, you can organise everything from tour management personnel down to ensuring that the crew at the garden party are smartly attired.
(The only real problem with the X Factor Party theme is that neighbours will either complain bitterly about a full blown gig in your garden, or else order a one-upmanship bigger show than yours from us for next year.)
For Entec can start small and professional and go all the way up to history-making gigs. Which is what we did with blur, going from Transit van sized shows to “Hello, Hyde Park….”
Working with some of the industry’s most experienced and respected technicians, production managers and stage and tour managers, Entec make production concerns into what’s called a ‘Gumpism’.
From the film Forrest Gump. He’s got a low IQ but he knows that suddenly getting rich beyond any worry was just, “ONE less thing to worry about….”
And so can it be for your production. It’s much more than concerts.
We’ve worked with Disney and Warner. At Ascot, The Tate Modern, The Houses of Parliament and Hampton Court. Gone motor sport at Beaulieu and Silverstone and corporate with ICI, Cadbury, Shell, Virgin, Renault and Rolls Royce. London Fashion Week and hair product launches even make us kinda girl-friendly-too. (After all, Entec’s a Matriarchy! – see Meet The Team.)
Lighting services
The difference between a bunch of lighting equipment piled up and all the hairs on your body going on end is design and application. It really helps if the equipment is State Of The Art computer controlled and performer-programmed moving tech. It helps if the lighting designers and technicians operating it are world class.
All ours are.
Entec has an equipment inventory so sexy that we have a significant slice of our trade ‘dry’ hiring high tech lighting hardware to our competitors. And if what you want is not sat waiting, we’ll get it.
Single shows and installations in places where you need riggers to fix and maintain them are grist to Entec’s Lighting Department’s mill but touring’s what we do best of all. The major brands of moving light technology from Vari-Lite, Clay Paky, Martin, GLP and Pixel Range systems are married up to the very best control from Avolites, Flying Pig and MA. Again, if you like a desk we don’t own, we’ll get you one.
As for the hardware, like trusses, motors and rigging and all the things you need to build the design you dreamt up, we’ve got it all. Along with all the ground support, mains arrays and followspots you could wish for. There’s a wide choice of special effects doodads and haze generation, along with Cycs, Gauzes, Star cloths and other soft goods. All of which has service records kept, gets PAT tested and is Safety Documented where applicable.
It’s a rich production palette. You can go from stark noir with a single spot-on-a-vocalist to a retina-blasting kinetic maelstrom of chromic chaos leaving your gig implanted into their very retinas and psyches for the rest of their lives.
Or something less pretentious.
We love it all.
Sound Services
The Sound Department may well get involved in church systems but the main faith has always been concerts. Our leader, Dick Hayes is a time served (never say Grizzled or Old) music business aristo. His roots go back to time as Front of House Engineer for the Who and then helping run their businesses for many years after that. This means that the same exacting standards that Dick learned to apply to these perfectionist principals came with him to Entec. And Entec’s always worked with the best.
Dick Hayes’ venue and live acoustics knowledge and experience is awesome. He is a reassuring presence behind every Entec sound reinforcement system. Treat him like your Sound Shrink. Be nakedly honest about your feelings and what you want your event’s sound to be like in terms of power, spread and the material played and you will be chuffed with the result. You can have a conference and be certain that they WILL hear you at the back, or you can ‘fly’ ever yet larger line-arrays of the über-potent d&b audiotechnik J-Series up in the air until the ground shakes. Or it could be a full orchestra with live recording offered in a heritage venue with astonishing digital audio control by dint of digital consoles and Hard Disc recorders.
For Entec are a bit like that most Blokey of adages about Men & Toys. And we do have some horribly cool ones. To start with there’s the superb d&b audiotechnik speakers and amplification. For the non-bizz, d&b audiotechnik started in a shed in 1981 but it was a German shed. The driven and passionate Teutonic speaker designers Jurgen Daubert and Rolf Belz are now household names (in houses that talk about the technical side of pro sound.) d&b equipment comes in many ranges from sized for small installations, or else slightly bigger club installations via theatre sized systems, all the way to what’s called ‘line array’. That’s the columns of speakers hanging at stadium and arena shows. Want more? You just hang up ever yet another stack until you have enough to inflate the O2’s very dome with your kick drum.
d&b’s transparency, clarity and detail, together with perfectly controlled and definable directivity, along with their smooth and improbably wide bandwidth make d&b sound systems the demanded choice of many tour managers’ want-lists; d&b are like Porsche. Hugely respected for performance and engineering yet much bigger in their field than the car maker is in theirs.
And as for the Front of House ordnance we have invested in some of the finest (and impressively pricey) digital control desks. With Midas’ 56 channel Pro6, Digidesign’s Profile and Venue consoles, a variety of Yamaha desks, as well as Digico’s superb D5 with 56 or a whopping 112 channels possible, along with HD recording via ProTools or Nuendo. We also own a host of lovely analogue kit to let your sound engineer loose on…..for those who still like a knob twiddle.
But whether you want a simple party PA ‘dry-hired’ with how-to instructions or to stage something epic, Entec are here to help.
One thing’s for sure. They’ll hear you at the back.
Corporate production
Now while the ‘Music Business’ is terribly glam and so forth, it does have an image clash with mainstream corporate culture. There are musicians in suits but their cut is altogether different. Yet the odd thing is that ‘Good Enough For Rock And Roll’(Which Barbara will recall as ‘good enough for jazz’) does have an axiomatic career-bedrock meaning that’s way beyond pretentious snappytalk for Ent-bods.
It means in time, functioning sweetly, organised perfectly and above all ready for curtain up.
For concerts and plays alike have the same eat-or-starve ethic that the Show Goes On. In the business world this means working against the clock.
Perhaps Entec are a little odd as they fully grasp the needs of the besuited who want the impact, fun and sheer “POW!” of the full-on Entec production values but need to do business crisply. We have a superb track record of working with oil companies, car manufacturers, major multinationals like ICI and household names like Cadbury. Even a proven track record of working well with challenging local government departments.
Entec’s full-service nature really helps as whatever it is that’s needed, across whatever technical discipline, we’ll know how to provide it.
“Let’s put on a show, right here in the barn!”
(Mickey Rooney, Babes in Arms, 1939 with Judy Garland, directed by Busby Berkeley)
Call us. (+) 44(0) 208 842 4004
(Copy written by Adam Rayner)