LD Uffe Jansson of Hysterical Design has taken on the task of delivering Kent's two festival shows as part of their new concept Kentfest, where the Swedish band, now celebrating its 24th anniversary, provides its vision of how a festival should be.
Kent is the festival's headline act, and Uffe Jansson was determined to create a lightshow that matched their status. "For me the important thing is to accentuate the band's music with lighting to make it a great concert. It is a fine line to use the right amount of effects for each song, when you have about 600-700 fixtures," he informs.
Besides the regular festival rig, Jansson added about 120 P-5 wash lights and 35 XC-5 colour strobes exclusively for Kent's performance. "My goal was to incorporate the entire stage, which is 80m wide, as one complete piece for the audience to view instead of just the 15m opening at the centre of the stage," says the designer. The large illumination surface he was handed was the result of the set designers' concept of creating the look of an abandoned industrial site, covering the scaffold with different fabrics and plastic materials in shades of grey and white.
For this purpose he deployed P-5s with different spread angles (21 and 43 degrees), placing some to light up the scaffold, fabrics and plastic material on the outside of the main stage, others for the Kentfest flags and again more as blinders, filling the entire width of the stage, as well as front and side lighting for the band.
For this impressive and powerful lightshow, there was no alternative to LED lighting. Jansson explains: "LED was the only option. I needed a powerful RGB fixture that could stand outdoor conditions. Maximum light output and vibrant colours were the most important criteria."
A product rating of IP65 was also essential to Jansson, since the shows are held in open air. And further to the massive output and the vibrant colours provides by the P-5 wash light, the strobe function was a definite plus to the designer, who reveals that there will be a 'next time' of deploying the P-5.
(Jim Evans)
