Colour Sound has Desire for Hurts
- Details
These included Moldova, Siberia, Belarus and Ukraine, and was a test to the tenacity, ingenuity, commitment and camaraderie of production manager Craig Sherwood and his team combined with the ardent enthusiasm of the band’s fan base.
Award winning production designer Rob Sinclair created the scenic and lighting design and worked with Matt Arthur as lighting director / programmer and operator on the road. It’s the third Hurts’ album cycle for these two, who have worked together in a similar format for the last 10 years.
The band’s production and the relationship with Colour Sound as a lighting and rigging supplier also goes back a long way.
H (Haydn Cruickshank) commented, “We always love working with Rob! You never know quite what to expect, but when the design is revealed, it’s always inventive, different and looks amazing! It was also great to be back on the road again with Hurts … we have enjoyed seeing their career success grow and grow due to a lot of hard work and some excellent music, and it was great to be working with Craig (Sherwood) again.”
For this first two weeks of the tour in Siberia, they took a floor and specials lighting package which fitted into one truck together with the audio gear. When they reached Riga, another truck was added carrying the full top lighting package and additional sound. The full production then continued until the end of the tour, another five weeks around Europe concluding with two highly memorable UK shows in London and Manchester.
Matt was joined on the road by a Colour Sound crew of Sam Kenyon (chief), Jonnie Westell and Liam Rudd. Sam and Jonnie did the whole tour including the first two weeks and were joined by Liam in Helsinki as they ramped up to the full rig.
Rob created a set and lighting scheme based around four ‘concrete’ pillars or stalagmites measuring between 12 and 16 ft. long and 20 inches in diameter, all offset at obtuse and jaunty angles and rotations!
The quirky industrial chic look set the scene and was augmented with a practical and compact lighting rig plus a couple of visual surprises which were revealed as the set unfolded, to bring a flourish of theatrical magic.
One of the lighting specials was an impressive chandelier made up from 36 x Martin Sceptron LED battens attached to three concentric aluminium rings of 5, 4 and 3 ft. diameters respectively. The three rings are fixed together and concertina into one other for storage/ transport in a large flight case.
It was flown on a truss with two Colour Sound Kinesys motors so it glided in and out to different positions, controlled by Sam using Kinesys Vector software. When they had the headroom, it was flown into the roof and hidden completely for the start of the show, dropping in during the opening sequence.
The second special effect was an upstage truss initially hidden behind the back paprika red drapes which were attached to a 12m Tab Track and opened / closed manually to reveal 20 x 1K fresnels rigged off 5 x 6m vertical pipes.
Six Robe BMFL Spots on the front truss were used primarily for front projection and downstage washes plus key light / pickups for the two artists, synthesist Adam Anderson and singer Theo Hutchcraft.
The mid truss was rigged with four Robe BMFL Spots and four Chauvet Rogue R2 washes. The BMFLs were key backlight on Hurts and also ideal for lighting the pillars as were the washes which also did a lot of work on these striking scenic elements.
The mid truss was also used to suspend the Sceptron chandelier in the centre when there wasn’t room for its own dedicated truss.
Rob and Matt both comment that H at Colour Sound was “instrumental and extremely helpful” in ensuring they received the rig they wanted, and Matt adds, “the gear came out of the warehouse meticulously prepped and Sam and the crew have been fantastic.”
Matt ran all the lighting from a Jands Vista console, creating a lively and colourful mix of looks and scenes, plenty of contests and drama that kept pumping to the end of an invigorating and enjoyable live show.
(Jim Evans)
