The conventionals are all placed on a front truss, while the rear truss is used for the effects-style lighting, housing four washes and four spots. The rest of the moving lights are rigged onto four vertical onstage truss sections with T-bars. With up to 12 artists on stage, it's sometimes a tight squeeze in the smaller-staged venues.
The busy stage also has certain creative advantages when it comes to lighting. Livingstone uses a lot of rear lighting and moody silhouetting of the performers, with beams shooting though from upstage. His lighting oeuvre maximizes strong, bold, saturated single colour blocks and strong duo colour mixes. It's simple but effective, and appropriate to the bands pastiche style of performance.
Livingstone decided to make a pyramid shape with the Pixellines, commenting: "I wanted to give the stage a nice geometric element, and the Pixellines were the ideal fixture." Four are hung from scaffolding pipes cantilevered off the upright towers, two are clamped to the truss, two outrigged on scaff' from the rear truss, and four are rigged horizontally on the floor and strapped to the side-fills. Livingstone says he picked Pixelline because "it's always good to have a 'trick' up your sleeve." He continues: "They are great - you can get completely insane effects with them". For Belle & Sebastian he uses the Pixellines to bring architectural definition to the stage, and for a variety of chases and some stunning mesmeric 'flip' looks. Being so bright, they're never run at full intensity.
Livingstone controls the show using an Avolites Sapphire console, which he finds ideal for busking. Livingstone works closely with his Entec lighting team mates, John Lahiffe and Alan King. Sound for the tour - based around an EAW KF750 system - is supplied by Perfect Beat Audio, mixed by Roger Lindsay at front-of-house and Stuart MacInnes on monitors.
(Lee Baldock)
