Lighting gets Savage for Gary Numan tour
- Details
Edwards has been Numan’s lighting and visual designer for the last four years keeping everything looking fresh and interesting onstage and for this tour, he specified 36 x Robe moving lights for the touring package with 18 x Spiider LED wash beams and 18 x of the new LEDBeam 150s.
The artist initially gets involved in the style of the stage design when planning a tour, then leaves Luke to bring his own touches of lighting magic to the table.
For this one they wanted to include a video element and make the show look as awesome as possible, all the time reinforcing the album themes based on the blending of Western and Eastern cultures in a post-apocalyptic world, arid and desertified by global warming.
The eight columns of video are made from panels with some gaps in between to give a more fragmented and random appearance, but positioned close enough so they can easily display a full image. They are rigged onto scaffolding frames with wheel-boards at the bottom for easy stage access.
The vertical gaps in between the eight columns are filled with the 18 x Spiiders, nine per side, clamped to the scaffolding structure.
The 18 x LEDBeam 150s are arranged in groups of three on three small stands each side and are used for low level cross stage lighting and effects.
The show is heavily back-lit to help capture the dystopian mood of the album concept, so these Spiider and LEDBeam 150 positions are invaluable for low-lighting, lighting Numan and the band who are upstage. The low angles provide an edgy contrast, skimming mysteriously across the stage, to the overhead and back lighting.
The floor package – the Robe lights and the LED panels - are being supplied by Belgian rental company Demon, based in Meerhout – Luke was brought up and spent his early career in Belgium and has a strong network of contacts there.
Luke is tech’ing it as well as running the show on an Avolites Quartz console, with an AI server taking care of the video playback.
For the larger gigs on the UK leg of the tour including Brixton Academy, a ‘top’ package was supplied by PRG, which came complete with Bradley Stokes and Karl Lawton to look after and tech it.
(Jim Evans)
