HSL and Electric Fly also recently collaborated to supply all production lighting and design for the 2008 Global Gathering dance festival, and Jevons states, "HSL is always my first choice for lighting rentals. Mike Oates (HSL's project manager) and his team have been fantastic - as always - in providing great service and excellent kit". For this event Electric Fly was working for live brand experience producers, Sevens 7.
The highlight of the two-day music and arts event was a performance from Massive Attack and United Visual Artists (UVA) - the last show of a summer tour that HSL has also been supplying with lighting equipment. Also featured at Beck's Fusion 2008 were New York disco revivalists Hercules and Love Affair and fellow New Yorker Santogold, plus The Presets and Midnight Juggernauts from Australia, Das Pop from Belgium, Sonny J from Liverpool and Manchester's own Elektrons.
Jevons designed a gently asymmetric festival lighting rig that would work for everyone using the stage.
He selected several architectural features like railway arches, bridges, viaducts, pillars and stanchions to be illuminated.
The stage was supplied by Star Events and built straddling two canal lock basins. Lighting was based around 6 runs of 6m A-type trussing all raked at different heights - the lowest being 3.5m off the ground - across the stage, and a 70ft wide front truss. All the fixtures were clearly visible in this design, imbibing it with a bit of a proto industrial feel to match the surrounding environment.
Moving lights were 12 Robe ColorWash 1200E ATs and 18 ColorSpot 1200E ATs. Each of the six-metre truss sections was rigged with two ColorSpots, two ColorWashes, two Martin Professional Atomic strobes, two 4-lite Moles and a bar of ACLs.
Six additional ColorSpot 1200E ATs were supplied for floor lighting, sat on their cases, and used for aerial effects and eye-candy. There were also six bars of six PARs on the rig and two R33 smoke machines and two Unique hazers for atmospherics.
An additional 18 Robe ColorSpot 1200E ATs were supplied for the stage left and stage right wings for Massive Attack, together with four 6K A&O Falcon Beam searchlights. The stage lighting was controlled by Jevons from an Avolites Diamond 4 console.
Despite the inclement weather, the event was a massive success and also concluded a mega busy 2008 festival season for HSL which has included Gatecrasher Summer Sound System, Rockness, Creamfields, Bestival and Global Gathering.
(Jim Evans)
