Colour Sound supports First Aid Kit tour
- Details
Colour Sound has provided lighting and crew for previous tours with the band, this being their largest and most comprehensive to date in terms of production.
Colour Sound’s Haydn Cruickshank (H) comments: “I have known Franki since she first started her professional career – she worked hard and was an extremely good and conscientious lighting technician. She’s always had a great flair for imagination, so it’s fantastic to see her creative star rising and evolving. We were really happy to be working with her on this in the UK and Europe.”
In terms of design, this is one of Franki’s largest tours to date. On the video side, she collaborated with Paul ‘Pablo’ Beckett and the team from Bryte who produced the content to her brief, which included extensive input from First Aid Kit themselves, Johanna and Klara Söderberg.
This UK tour culminated in two sold-out shows at London’s Brixton Academy, and a production design that was evolved from a version used on the Swedish tour earlier in the year which played similar sized venues.
Projection was important on this tour. Film is a strong source of inspiration for Joanna and Klara, they take a keen interest, and much of the footage has a textured and cinematic feel present across all the content, be it animated graphics or camera footage.
The projection system – comprising the backdrop and Resolume laptops running the content – is a universal item of production that has travelled everywhere on the tour, so a key start point for the lighting design was the backdrop, which is made from a white Showtex DekoTaft Crunch crushed taffeta fabric.
With video being central to the show, Franki selected lights for the quality of their optics so they could bring maximum colour and depth to the stage, also fixtures that could be finessed and nicely controlled with 29 x Robe MegaPointes as the primary moving lights on the rig.
She chose Robe LEDWash 600s for the main wash luminaire. “I wanted something simple to do the job elegantly and with good colours” she states. Twelve of these were deployed on the floor, with nine in the roof. The projection screen was delineated top and bottom by a row of GLP Impression XBar 20s, 12 on the floor and 12 in the air which “had a great impact.”
At Brixton, a large glitter ball was suspended above the middle of the auditorium, lit with four Claypaky Scenius Unicos positioned at FOH and on a flown truss with the mirrorball.
Claypaky Stormy LED strobes were dotted around as Franki specifically wanted an RGB unit that didn’t look like a collection of pixels.
The two sisters were key lit with ETC Source Four profiles and fresnels on the front truss, while several rows of 2-cell Moles were scattered throughout the rig. Franki programmed and ran the show on a grandMA2 light, running an MA3 light as a backup.
Her touring Colour Sound crew were Chris Brown and Hadyn Williams, joined by Stu Barr as an extra pair of hands at Brixton. Franki is also a working LD.
(Jim Evans)
