Snow Patrol kicked off the first UK leg of their ‘Fallen Empires’ world tour with a truly stunning looking show created by lighting designer Davy Sherwin, Catalyst and live visuals programmer / visuals operator Robin Haddow and video director Blue Leach – collectively known on the tour as ‘The Art Department’.
Leading UK lighting and visuals rental company HSL, based in Blackburn, supplied lighting equipment, a 26-axes Kinesys automation system, all associated trussing and rigging plus crew.
HSL’s project manager Mike Oates commented, “We love working with Davy and Robin and have seen the band’s show and their designs take a real journey and evolution over the last few years. Each tour is always fresh in ideas and this is among the best yet”.
Just as the band have explored new and alternative musical directions with Fallen Empires, their sixth hugely successful studio album, Sherwin’s lighting has moved into a different stratosphere.
Retaining all the theatricality and drama of the big rock show he introduced an architectural dynamic with six large flying pods. These come together to form a giant snowflake – the band’s logo – a move only actually seen once at the culmination of the set.
The undersides of the pods are clad with Barco’s FLX LED mesh, which is used for some really diverse, interesting and off-beat video looks and effects. The Pods all move into numerous different positions together and independently throughout the show, giving every song a totally unique look.
Upstage in the stage left and stage right corners were four diagonal flying trusses on the same Kinesys automation system as the Pods, and the front truss was a V shape. Between the diagonals and the front truss each side were two straight side ‘torm’ trusses.
Far upstage was a large Stealth screen with a gauze in front and a grey cyc behind. Combining these two scenic elements (gauze and cyc) with some classic ‘magic’ lighting, the screen disappeared completely when not in use.
Rigged on the Pods were four Clay Paky Alpha Beam 700 moving lights and 30 Chroma-Q Color Block DB4 Mk II LED battens outlining the shape of each pod.
On the V-truss at the front were 16 VARI*LITE V*L3500 Washes and 16 i-Pix BB4 LED blinders. Fourteen linear 4-cell Moles were rigged vertically and blasted into the audience for the band’s highly interactive show.
Upstage on the diagonal trusses were three Martin Professional MAC 3s on one truss and four on the other – both sides – giving a total of 14 MAC 3s, alternated with three and four Atomic Colours respectively.
On the back truss, eight MAC 2K Wash XBs and six Atomic colours were all primarily used for highlighting the cyc.
Spread out along the four torms either side were a total of 16 Robe ROBIN 600 LEDWashes, utilised for general higher up cross stage coverage.
The floor lighting started upstage with another eight MAC 2K XB Washes to up-light the cyc, followed by a row of eight MAC 3Ks pointing forwards alternated with seven Atomic Colours – all for more intense back lighting and beam-ology.
For super-punchy punctuations and accents, six CP Sharpies on the mid stage risers provided tight columns of light, with another six running along the downstage edge of the stage, all giving cool double-level floor based ‘power looks’.
For cross stage lighting at deck level in the ‘kicker’ position were another four Robe ROBIN 600 LEDWashes a side.
Stage atmospherics were boosted with two Le Maitre Stadium hazers, four Cirro Lite Strata mist systems and two Jem ZR 33s, and HSL’s lighting package was completed with the supply of four Robert Juliat 3.5K Zodiac follow spots.
Sherwin’s console of choice is currently the Road Hog Full Boar, which is run with a mini wing and complete hot backup.
Haddow ran the Catalyst and all the playback video footage via a Hog PC and Blue Leach cut the video IMAG mix also sitting at FOH, using two Ableton Launchpad USB MIDI touch controllers, which fed into the Catalyst and were then output to screen. The Kinesys K2 system was operated by Dave Jolley.
Video equipment was supplied by XL Video.
The tour is expected to continue for most of the year, which will allow many more to experience the beautifully fluid, intelligently harmonised visual chemistry.
