CSE in Combat Sports with The Vaccines
- Details
The Combat Sports album cycle started in April 2018 and having already played extensively around the UK last year, Dan and the band wanted to treat fans to a new visual experience and ensure that the Vaccines - known for their enthusiastic and ebullient live shows - saw something different.
Last year’s UK tour design was inspired by the album track Nightclub, yielding lots of mirror balls and a tungsteny disco vibe.
For the festival section of the tour, Williams had a gold sequined drape made up with a large logo across the middle, and this evolved into the lighting look for this leg, which bridges front the nightclub into the fight club, matching the band’s combative high energy sets.
The band - in particular lead singer/guitarist Justin Hayward-Young and guitarist Freddie Cowan - are usually also bursting with ideas, and one of these was to give the stage some Las Vegas touches.
These came in the form of a row of Martin VDO Sceptron 10s along the front of the upstage risers and two large scenic palm trees framing the stage each side, together with some other foliage sourced from Event Prop Hire. This proved a good transition from the disco glitz.
All the touring lighting rig from Colour Sound was floor based, and they hooked into a local promoter provided ‘top’ rig at each venue.
The touring system started upstage with a row of six Robe MegaPointes, which provided a wide range of effects and are so versatile that six was more than enough to bring plenty of variety to the stage.
Further downstage were six 1.5m-long scaff poles on floor bases, each with a Portman P3 PIX3L on top and a JDC1 strobe clamped half way down the pipe.
In front of these were the Sceptrons along the lip of the risers and then six Claypaky A.leda K20 B-Eye LED wash lights positioned in a U shape around the band. Two of these each side were ideal for low level cross lighting treatment, with the remaining two secreted behind the risers which were perfect for illuminating the trees.
Thirty-two chrome (original) PAR 64s attached to four Litec QX30 truss towers on X-bases and wheeled tank traps, complete with miscellaneous outriggers, clamps and supports which were arranged like industrial palm leaves behind and between the two trees in a series of asymmetric curves.
Finally, a pair of Source Four Zooms on two-metre scaff tubes placed at the downstage corners were used to shoot slices of luminescence across the backdrop and shimmer the logo.
The touring package was controlled via two grandMA3 consoles which Williams was running in grandMA2 mode supported by a full Luminex system.
(Jim Evans)
