Warren has designed their lighting since 2007. In March 2014 they launched their Love Letters album, the campaign for which kicked off in the UK - exclusively using Robe moving lights - and culminating in a spectacular show at London's Brixton Academy.
Before the start of each tour, he combines minds with Oscar Cash regarding set design, and this time around they came up with the idea of making it resemble a low-budget 1970's music TV show. Warren is also inspired by James Turrell's light art, and so wanted to have a canvas that offered multiple contrasts for lighting.
He decided to make all the band risers diamond shape, downlit with LED tape, also lighting the fronts of keyboards with LED tape. The set pieces and backdrops are also lit separately - so before even a single light was added to the rig, he had 12 individual surfaces which could be lit, textured and coloured.
An adaptable floor package was supplied by Southampton based GLS, and this went in to all of the venues, comprising eight Robe Robin LEDBeam 100s, six Robin LEDWash 300s, two strobes and a mirror-ball.
For the larger venues on the itinerary this was boosted with a U shaped angled truss in the air, rigged with eight Robin Pointes, seven Robin LEDWash 600s, four strobes and three mirror-balls, together with a V-shaped truss at the front yielding six Robin 600E Spots and another six LEDWash 600s.
On the downstage edge of the deck four Pointes were added, and upstage behind the backdrop were an extra four LEDWash 600s and three strobes, for backlighting the double sided backdrop.
This full production rig will also be used for their French arena shows. Most of the other European gigs will utilize just the essential floor package combined with some house lights. Warren is operating all the lights with his own Chamsys MQ60 console
(Jim Evans)
