ER Productions in Chemical Brothers mix
- Details
Chemical Brothers Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have spent nearly 30 years bringing big beat tunes to their fan base of dance and rock fans. The 2018 Chems live tour began in June, at Rockhal, Luxemburg, in June, and concludes at Corona Capital, Mexico City, this month.
The show design was to be a combination of mesmerising visuals, and ER Productions worked with production manager, James Baseley, stage manager Toby Dennis, touring lighting designer, Thomas Deschandel, and show designers, Marcus Lyall and Adam Smith to deliver another phenomenal show. The set’s visual highlights included huge LED screens, showing their signature array of 3D characters, an incredible strobe light wall, and the appearance of the four-metre tall robots, affectionately nicknamed George and Mildred, created by Specialz.
As part of the theatrical and immersive experience, ER’s lasers had an important part to play, and included a number of carefully-planned and perfectly executed cues. ER’s lasers created a stunning atmosphere during tracks Chemical Beats, Hey Boy Hey Girl, Surface to Air and for the encore Got Glint, using 18 Kinekts, (eight positioned along the downstage edge, eight upstage, and two located behind a screen on kinesis pods), 130W Phaenon positioned centrally on a lifting column, a 24W Tripan centre stage, and four custom built Beambursts inside the eyes of the robots, who appeared to come to life and dance during Under The Influence. All were controlled by ER Productions’ senior laser technician, Tom Vallis, via Pangolin Beyond.
Fourteen Viper deluxe and four Unique Hazers created the atmospherics via Chamsys MagicQ with a MiniWing. ER’s SFX came into play during Keep On Making Me High, at the five special arena shows in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin. Ten Swirl Fans, fitted over the audience truss, dropped white and silver confetti over the crowd adding to the show’s party ambience.
ER’s co-founder, Marc Webber comments: “It’s always a pleasure working with the Chemical Brothers and their team, but it was great to provide SFX alongside our lasers, which has been very well-received. The show looks and sounds so impressive, it’s been fantastic to hear rave reviews.”
(Jim Evans)
