Robe backs Arsenal in Antwerp arena
- Details
With their roots in electric dance, the band now embrace a lively mix of genres from African and Latin American rhythms to pop, hip hop, and indie rock. They are midway through a campaign for their sixth studio album, The Rush of Shaking Shoulders which was launched earlier in the year with a gig in Antwerp’s Old Post Office venue.
Wouter had used Robe on that occasion too, and for many other shows in between, so it was a natural choice for this show, with lighting equipment supplied by rental specialist Splendit.
The Robe count included 28 MegaPointes, 24 Spikies, 28 Spiiders, 22 LEDBeam 150s and eight Pointes.
The starting point for the lighting was that band leader Hendrik Willemyns wanted a sun which rose at the start of the show, playing a strong visual role throughout their performance and then descending towards the end. The latest single is set in Africa, and so they wanted to accentuate the idea of the big skies, dramatic sunrises and awesome sunsets that characterise different countries across continent.
The other element was that Hendrik loves trees, plants and greenery, so as with the album launch, the stage set was provided by the installation of a forest of lush foliage and exotic plants.
The 4m 'sun' was created using LED screen panels attached to a circular truss and artist Akiko Nakayama created all the content through 'Alive Painting', a technique she’s developed - not dissimilar to the liquid oil artists of the 1960s - which depicts the resonance between shapes and textures using different liquids and paints each with unique characteristics.
Wouter and the band have worked with Akiko before on key gigs, and prior to this show they discussed the colour themes and lighting for different songs so she could co-ordinate. Her workspace was set up at FOH and the results were fed via an overhead camera system to the screen. This beautifully organic approach to video was something refreshing and different.
Wouter wanted some small, lightweight punchy beamy lights around the sun, and 24 Spikies provided the solution. The intensity of their beams was impressive in the cavernous roof of the Lotto Arena.
In addition to this, Wouter wanted lights all around the stage from every angle. The Splendit crew installed a curved truss immediately above the tree line that formed an arch circumnavigating the band, which was rigged with 20 MegaPointes.
The front light was provided by 16 x Spiiders on the front truss and eight Pointes on the front truss which were used for gobo-work onto the trees and other funky bits, plus another eight Spiiders on the floor.
Wouter reckons the Spiider is a brilliant wash light and he used the flower effect on the floor-based units which worked a treat, while he also capitalised on the fatness and quality of the beams on the Spiiders rigged overhead.
Wouter programmed and ran the show on a ChamSys console. Splendit supplied all the lighting equipment, video and crew as well as - via Gravity Design - the automation which lifted the sun up and down, operated by Rik Uyttersprot.
(Jim Evans)
