Nick Gray, lighting designer of Renegade Design, created a breath-taking and sleek show for British rockers Kasabian’s major UK arena tour. Their music is all about huge builds and drops, drawing the audience in and then knocking them back.

Gray used an array of Clay Paky Sharpys and Sharpy Wash 330 fixtures, bringing power, reliability and vibrant colour to the design. Lighting fixtures was supplied by Neg Earth, the Sharpys and the Sharpy Wash 330 fixtures were positioned high in the overhead rig to flood the stage with intense colours and provide stunning, dynamic, audience-embracing aerial effects.

“Both the Sharpy’s and the Sharpy Wash 330’s range of saturated colour is fantastic and reliable. We had to choose our fixtures carefully ensuring we had something that was good quality, feature-rich and robust. I wanted to use B-EYEs but that was not to be this time, I’m really looking forward to using them and the Stormy Strobes, for the festival season next summer,’ he says.

Gray has exploited every dynamic feature to deliver a light show that complements the video, embraces the audience and punctuates each musical nuance. Working collaboratively with programmer / operator Rob Gawler, the resulting show was extremely tight and cue-rich with every visual effect delivered in beat-perfect synchronicity with the band.

“The guys are all fantastic performers, so I’m pretty relentless with the lights and screens. The audience experience is a spectacular sensory overload – they love it and go mental!’ confirms Gray.
Gray and the band’s main man Sergio Pizzorno have similar artistic tastes and so made the decision to collaborate on the video content design for the tour, inspired by the psychedelic 2009 film Enter The Void. The Sharpy Wash 330’s stunning texturising effects bring a further 3D effect to the look, perfectly complementing the visuals and enthralling the audience.

“The Sharpy’s and the Sharpy Wash 330s are working really hard on this tour, giving plenty creative variety in terms of looks, and they move really fast,’ concludes Gray. “I’ve always been a fan of Clay Paky, the company is a true innovator, it’s about having the idea first, and Clay Paky does that every time.’