Harman Pro UK, distributors for the Harman Group of pro audio, live sound and installation audio manufacturing companies in the UK and Eire, recently supplied all the AKG microphones for Ray Davies' stunning live performance at the BBC's Electric Proms event, which took place in North London over the course of a week at the end of October 2007.

The Kinks' co-founder and chief songwriter took the stage to a packed audience at Camden's refurbished rock venue the Roundhouse and ran through an electrifying set of vintage Kinks numbers (some of which had never been performed live) and recent solo material. He was even joined on vocals during ‘Sunny Afternoon' by Razorlight's Johnny Borrell. Davies clearly enjoyed every minute of the gig, telling old Kinks anecdotes between numbers, racing around the stage during classics like 'All Day And All Of The Night' and 'You Really Got Me', and declaring himself to be in paradise at the end of the final verse of perhaps his finest composition, 'Waterloo Sunset', just like the characters Terry and Julie in the song.

The fantastic atmosphere of this great concert, which was filmed and broadcast on the same night on BBC television and radio, was captured brilliantly by an array of AKG microphones set up by Davies's live sound engineers Tristan Mallett and Chris Wibberley. The engineers have been using C414s on the guitars and as drum overheads on all of the concerts Davies has performed this year in support of his new album, Working Man's Café, and introduced Ray to the new C5 and D5 stage mics when they were released earlier this year.

For the Electric Proms concert at the Roundhouse, Harman Pro UK supplied them with an Elle C microphone for one of Ray's female backing singers, while the man himself used a C5 condenser throughout the gig. "We've not been able to separate Ray from the C5 since he tried it out earlier this year," explains Chris Wibberley. "It's become his standard live vocal mic."

The biggest challenge was miking up the 44-strong Crouch End Festival Chorus, who accompanied Ray for four numbers during his first encore towards the end of the concert, conducted by David Temple. "Ray's band play very loud on stage, so we were wondering how we could introduce more overhead mics for the chorus without running the risk of distortion," continues Chris Wibberley. "We knew from the earlier gigs that the C5 and D5 would be OK, as they've proved amazingly resistant to feedback, but we were concerned about miking up the choir. We discussed it with Harman Pro UK and they suggested we use AKG's C477 headset mics. We gave every member of the chorus one of those, and it worked really well. Some of the TV people were concerned that the headsets would look odd on camera, but in the end they were hardly noticeable, and it was definitely worth it for the results we got - even me and Tristan were surprised at how good it sounded, and we had loads of people congratulating us after the broadcast, even the ones that had been worried beforehand."

Working Man's Café is on sale now, and Ray Davies fans on-line are already agitating for a DVD release for the Electric Proms concert, although a release has yet to be confirmed.