Gaskell was happy to get his hands on 12 Martin MAC 250 Beams for Orbital's set at London Freeze 2009, a snow sport and music event held at Battersea Power Station in London from 30 October to 1 November.
"It has an excellent fat beam, usable gobos, and lovely colour mixing," he says. "They gave the rig a serious level of punch and stood out over the rest of the rig, giving stadium style fat searchlight beams."
The festival played host to live music acts on two stages with Orbital as headliners. Gaskell had six MAC 250 Beams sub-hung on drop bars across the back of the stage with an additional six on the floor. Also in the rig were 12 Martin MAC 700 Profiles, 10 MAC 700 Washes, 10 Atomic 3000 strobes with Atomic Colors scrollers, eight MAC 250 Entours and two Magnum Pro 2000 smoke machines.
"David Stewart at Martin UK was great as usual and looked after me, and a very good house crew worked hard to produce a great show," Gaskell says.
VME of Knutsford, Cheshire supplied lighting and sound for the main stage and sound for the snowboarding competition. This is the second year VME has been involved in London Freeze with this year's rig designed by VME's Steve Ness. Lighting programming and operation was by Jamie Campbell.
Dion Davie, managing director at VME stated: "We chose to stock the MAC 250 Beam fixture as it is a good addition to the Martin range. We were looking to replace our old MAC 300 units and have always been happy with quality of product and support we get from Martin. This coupled with a deal on purchasing 250 Washes with Beam upgrade kits seemed to make sense. We got a very versatile unit at a good price."
(Jim Evans)
