DBN was asked to light the dance/indie/crossover by event organisers The Warehouse Project and Ear To The Ground - with whom they have worked on many other projects.
Ian Brown headlined the main stage on the Friday night and Friendly Fires on the Saturday, and the project was managed for DBN by Nick Walton.
Walton also did the production design for the main stage, which was largely based around the lighting spec and design for Ian Brown by LD Fletch from Colour Sound Experiment. The rig also incorporated the flexibility to be morphed into a completely different looking show for Friendly Fires on the Saturday.
They sub-hung trusses from the 18m Orbit style stage. The back truss was then rigged with 14 Clay Paky Alpha Wash 300s and 12 Alpha Spot 1200 HPEs, along with a selection of 2 and 4-way Moles and Martin Atomic strobes on drop bars.
The front truss had practicality to the fore, with Alpha Wash 575s for good over-stage wash coverage and Alpha Spot 1200 HPEs for effects and texturing, more Atomics for zappy effects and 8-lite Moles facing into the audience for crowd illumination.
On the floor were 6 x 3m vertical trussing towers, each with a Martin MAC 250 on top, and four 5-way ChromaQ dB4 LED battens. These were run through a Hippotizer digital media server, triggered from an Avolites Pearl Tiger console. The main stage lighting was run from an Avolites Pearl Expert.
On Saturday night, the rig mutated to produce a completely different environment to host the Friendly Fires, whose lighting was operated by Mark Video.
The Big Top was a four-king pole tent, in which DBN rigged a four-sided box truss between the poles with a ground supported rear truss behind the stage end.
Lighting fixtures included 16 CP Alpha Spot 300 HPEs and 8 Alpha Spot 575 HPEs, 6 Atomics and 3 DV3000 strobes, plus generics in the form of PARs, Source Fours and 2-lite Moles. For LED, they used 2 iPix BB16 mega wash lights, 6 i-Pix BB4s and 3 x BB7 spot versions all of which were onstage for general eye-candy and for creating big bold blocks of colour. The lighting desk was an Avo Pearl 2008, operated by a combination of Nick Walton and Ibs.
The Hacienda/Now Wave Stage utilised eight bars of 6 PARs and DBN's carefully preserved High End Trackspots, 10 of which were dusted off, serviced and dotted around the stage. "They have a definite time and a place and are well worth keeping hold of - We love them," comments Walton. They also had six MAC 250s on the dancefloor, the lighting for which was on a truss hung between the 2 poles. Lighting in here was controlled on an Avo Pearl Tiger run by Ed Marriot for both days.
In keeping with the organiser's desire to utilise local talent and resources, Audile supplied site wide sound to all areas.
(Jim Evans)
