Mylo's lighting designer Ian Tomlinson first worked with the band on a string of summer festivals, which then continued into the autumn with their own UK and Irish headline tour. He collaborated closely with video designer Dave Ross from Phantom to develop the stage visuals, taking the concept of moody back lighting, silhouetting and shadowing as a starting point. "The band prefer being lit from behind," he explains. "It's a challenge to start with, but once you get your head around the philosophy, there's huge amounts you can actually do without lighting them directly. It's a very challenging and interesting way to work."
Tomlinson also included plenty of dramatic, low, cross-stage lighting in his design. The touring lighting and video rigs were boosted with additional kit for the two sold-out Brixton Academy shows.
It's an asymmetric rig, based around a front and back truss. The back truss contained three Martin Mac 550s and three High End Studio Beams, and the projection screen was hung below. Two horizontal sub-hung truss sections carried two additional 550s and an Atomic strobe. The front truss included four Studio Beams and four MAC 550s, the latter used to light the band and for creating colour and beam chases to wash the stage and sweep out into the audience, transporting the energy from the stage.
On the floor, upstage of the backline, sat three more MAC 550s. Downstage were another two 550s each side, shooting across stage, plus another three Studio Beams at the back, lined up with the 550s. All the fixtures at the rear of stage were set at different heights to give an extra dynamic to the show.
Also on the floor were six boom bases with 3m scaff poles attached, three either side of the screen. The onstage pair had a Pixelline 1044 batten attached, the next pair of poles had a 1044 and a strobe, and the third pair was rigged with three 1044s and two strobes. The PixelLines were all at jaunty 45° angles.
Tomlinson used a PixelDrive system to run the PixelLines. He took some of Dave Ross's video inputs that were in use on the screen, aiming for a mix of visual 'looks' that blended smoothly between screen video and lighting. He and Adlib Lighting crew-mate Andy Rowe also created new video content from scratch from within the PixelDrive.
He chose an Avolites Diamond 4 for control - the first time he'd had a chance to utilize the console's full power, "I've always been a Pearl user," he says, "So the D4 was incredibly easy to learn in a short time." He spent an afternoon playing with the desk in the warehouse before the tour went out, and praises the flexibility of the Cue Lists, which he used extensively for the Mylo show - all of which was operated live and improvised, as opposed to pre-programmed cues. "It's a very exciting and energising way to operate," he says. The D4 was also used to trigger the PixelDrive.
Adlib Audio supplied a Nexo Alpha system for the tour, complete with system engineers Steve Cole (FOH) and Dave Bennett (monitors). Mylo's FOH engineer is Jamie Butterworth, and Iain Graham mixes monitors.
The system comprised 14 Nexo M3 enclosures in total for the left and right front arrays, plus 14 B1 bass cabinets and eight S2 subs. At Brixton, they added an additional six cabinets per side, giving 13 highs per side in total plus another two bass and two subs per side. They also added some Adlib FD delay stacks at the back of the hall - which worked well in that venue in terms of improving definition at the back of the room under the balcony. The system was powered by Camco amps, and new Nexo TD242 processors
