Blackburn-based rental company HSL supplied Electric Fly Productions with lighting equipment for The Darkness’ UK tour, working with lighting designer Nick Jevons.
The band was returning to the road after a five-year absence, ahead of the launch of their third studio album, and was project managed for HSL by Mike Oates. This is the first time Jevons has worked with the Darkness, and was asked on board after working with production manager Chris Taplin and The Faces in the summer.
The impressive creative results were borne out of the advantages of having the latest bright, lightweight moving lights at Jevons’ disposal. In spite of having just one truck for the whole production and the venues being of variable size, his ideas, conceived in close collaboration with the band, were based on the theme of rock ‘n’ roll meets the faded freakshow/circus. The backdrop was of striking dirty yellow and black circus tent stripes with a large eyeball in the centre. The minimal backline was also draped in the same material, made by Hangman.
Jevons’ rig was based architecturally on six, eight-metre-long ‘spine’ trusses made from Tomcat 1 lite-beam, rigged slightly off-centre, running upstage/downstage and raked from back to front. They proved highly flexible. The lengths could be reduced as needed and the way they were rigged modified as required.
One of the biggest technical coups of the tour was fitting the entire rig into Nottingham Rock City (using three-metre spines) and filling Hammersmith Apollo with exactly the same rig.
www.hslgroup.com
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