Back in August, inthemix sat down with Stereosonic to get a sense of how the gargantuan 2010 tour was coming together. Now we’re just a few weeks out from the first show in Sydney, and the scale of the production is looking even more ambitious than we had predicted. To bring us up to speed, onelove Brand Manager John Curtin fields some more questions about staging, sound, private planes and those dreaded clashes.

Now that we’re very close to the Stereosonic tour kicking off, how are you feeling about how all the venues will work?
It’s pretty exciting. I can’t believe how quickly the campaign has gone; it’s been one of our strongest campaigns and perfect time of the year. This year’s Stereosonic is all about been bigger. It has grown incredibly in terms of crowd numbers, artists, production, bars, amenities such as toilets, and most importantly size.

Melbourne is now 30-percent bigger with two main stages and eight stages overall. Sydney at Homebush can hold over 40,000 people with a great set-up. In Brisbane the venue is amazing; much bigger and better. We have added stages to increase our capacity in Perth and in Adelaide we have increased our amenities and bars. Our Gold Class sections are amazing and have nearly sold out in all cities.

What’s the latest update about the new bars?
All progressing along. We have tripled the bar size in Melbourne and tripled the entry points with more ticket scanners and quicker deployment. All other cities have bigger bars and you will be able to purchase drink cards directly from the bars which will decrease waiting in line twice and with extra bars will dramatically decrease wait time. We also have Asahi, Strongbow, Smirnoff, Passion Pop and Nutrient Water.

The arena line-ups are a reminder of how gargantuan this tour is, and there’s a whole lot happening on the mainstage in each city. How will that arena be staged?
Yeah, it’s pretty epic. The mainstage in Sydney is massive, as is Melbourne’s. We have taken out the two side stages and bars from last year and turned it around and made the capacity 30 to 40-percent larger on top of adding another mainstage.

Is it a daunting task to program the running order of each stage so the flow is right?
Yeah, especially when we have private jets flying acts between cities for the Sydney show that we share with Foreshore in Canberra. Melbourne and Adelaide also are on the same day, so again we have private jets flying acts between shows.

There are always complaints of ‘clashes’. We aim to lessen this, but we also have to have some headliners playing at the same time just so that the stages don’t get too packed and there is movement. Some of the key acts demand to be playing at certain times of day, so unfortunately it’s inevitable. Some of the headline acts are employing some amazing lighting, props and video, so get excited.

The Carl Cox & Friends concept was a huge success at Ibiza in summer and has been carried over to some major festivals in Europe. How has it been collaborating with Cox on that concept for Stereosonic?
Pretty amazing. About four weeks before we launched Stereosonic, Carl actually called Richie McNeill (Managing Director) and demanded to be on the line-up for this year. He said that all the artists in Ibiza were talking about it and we spoke to him and got the Carl Cox & Friends stage happening.

Carl is just an incredible act – such a performer. Musically he rocks a festival and he loves it. I caught him this year for a few hours at Space in Ibiza and he rocked it as always.