GOLDFRAPP SEVENTH TREE... ON THE TYNE

Alison Goldfrapp’s music has often been inspired by visual media like films, and with composer Will Gregory’s classical origins and intricately synthesized narratives, over time they have embraced a seriously dynamic range of musical styles, all with unique and individual results.

From the darkly obsession to up-beat disco electronica and the swirling dance anthems that hit such a popular note, they’ve still remained elusive to any attempt at aesthetic typecasting.

AnFor lighting designer Rob Sinclair, getting the gig presented many challenges, and as he expected, it’s proved one his most artistically satisfying projects to date. Always up for a creative experiment, this was his first Goldfrapp tour, having been introduced to them by a previous production manager who had an inkling that he and Alison would get on — which they do, he confirmed.

“It’s been hard work, and the show is constantly evolving. It’s also been extremely fulfilling and very exciting,” said Sinclair.

His starting point was an initial meeting with Alison Goldfrapp. At that point, he hadn’t heard the new music, but had seen some promo shots, which instantly made him think of Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult British horror flick ‘The Wicker Man’. Coincidentally, it turned out that this is also one of her cinematic inspirations. They clicked.

Goldfrapp wanted a rural vibe onstage for this tour because they’d recorded their Seventh Tree album in the countryside near Bath. For his part, Sinclair wanted to introduce video projection into the show, with the idea of projecting from the front across the whole stage and everyone on it.

For him, the album had a myriad of psychedelic twists that he felt could be ideally expressed with video, and his work is generally characterised by a special penchant for integrating lighting, moving images and graphic content into one ‘visual’ medium. He’s also a bit of a wizard at creating his own digital and video content.

Goldfrapp then decided she wanted to band to wear white, meaning that with the 40’ x 23’ backdrop made up of 15 white wicker fences, Sinclair had a perfect, relatively subtle and somewhat different projection surface.

The fencing panels were the upshot of Sinclair’s initial discussions with her, sourced from The Natural Fencing Company, then fireproofed and whitewashed by ASETS in Blackpool. He thought they were ideal to represent the rural elements required, and also found them idiosyncratic enough to fit his whole design oeuvre — a sense of the village fete gone colourfully wild on ketamine!

Video is absolutely central to the show. Although Goldfrapp had never used video on any of her previous stage performances and was initially reticent, she was also prepared to be experimental, and respected Sinclair’s imaginative space in creating an appropriate canvas.

Sinclair introduced the projections gently at some pre-tour warm up shows for the album launch, where they went down a complete storm, erasing any question marks over the subsequent inclusion of video.

The set itself — influenced by some of Goldfrapp’s own strong ideas — added additional idiosyncrasies and touches of madness.

This included a huge maypole in the middle, topped with a massive pair of antlers made by prop maker Natasha Lawes, which was joined by stuffed owls and ravens, several strings of bunting, assorted foliage and an eclectic selection of other ‘village fete’ type accoutrements.

VISUAL ODDITIES
Projection consisted of two Barco R12+s, supplied by XL Video (via project manager Des Fallon) and tech’d on the tour by Sinclair himself. They were overlaid to produce a single large, bright image, and fed from a Catalyst media server which stored all the content and was triggered by Sinclair’s Jands S1 lighting console.

Sinclair also applied some bits of his own quirky magic to the visual equation — including routing an audio feed from the Theremin that Goldfrapp plays in the song ‘Train’ into the Catalyst, which output it as a crazy waveform on-screen.

He also utilised a Chromascope (an early 1980s video synth), purchased from eBay some years ago for “a fortune”. This was collecting dust Chez Sinclair, just waiting for an opportunity to be used in its slightly broken, completely uncontrollable state, more resembling an electronic relic from a ‘Doctor Who’ set! However, it produces fabulously askew patterns when fed from another Theremin at his FOH desk, and was also used to tune the projector colours and produce other whacky effects.

Much of the show’s video content is Super 8 footage shot by Alison and Will Gregory whilst making the Seventh Tree album, which is combined with footage shot by Sinclair in Super 8, and some additional HD video which he cut and graded to look like Super 8. The content has no computer graphics or Catalyst library footage — in keeping with the slightly deranged 1970s post-psychedelic vibe.

LIGHTING CONFIGURATION
Once Sinclair had designed and formulated the show’s basic video elements, he turned his attention to lighting. It’s based around three trusses, although on this leg of the tour, they used house front trusses when that option was available and more convenient, with their two upstage trusses having a skewed trussing bridge between them.

The moving lights were 10 Martin Professional MAC 700 Profiles and 16 High End PC Beams. They were joined by 12 Atomic strobes, 12 Lowell Omni photo floods and 15 ETC Source Four profiles. That was it!

Sinclair proved once again to be a master of the ‘less is more’ genre of lighting, his impeccable timing, the eccentric video sequences and the high impact big lighting moments all adding to the exhilaration and drama of the performance.

There were also a few standard givens. The primary one was ensuring he had key lighting on Alison from at least six different angles, and that the rest of the band were well lit at all times.

The Jands Vista S1 is Sinclair’s current control desk of choice, run complete with two MI wings which he owns. It packs neatly into two Peli cases and can be taken anywhere as excess baggage.

Lighting kit for the UK section was supplied by Neg Earth, along with techs Graham Hill and Andy Szpalik.

SONIC VIBE
Sinclair shares his FOH space with sound engineer Ben Findlay, also enjoying his first Goldfrapp tour. He finds the music “fantastic, with some seriously dark emotional corners” and likes Goldfrapp’s intelligent song writing and her thought-provoking lyrics.

When he started the tour, Will Gregory was very much hands-on with him at the console, and is a man who very much knows how he wants it to sound live. He likes to hear the big dynamic pushes and bold moves in the music elucidates Findlay, adding: “As an engineer, you might rein in the ‘boldness’ if he wasn’t around”.

However, it’s been a very sonically liberating experience, and Findlay also knows how far Gregory is happy to have things pushed.

The reference — the album — all runs to click, and the trick is translating a carefully balanced studio mix into a big boomy room... essentially the basics of the art of live mixing. Obviously, the lyrics are a vital essence of the Goldfrapp cocktail.

The kit was supplied by Britannia Row — a company Findlay used many times whilst working with Peter Gabriel (whom he also engineers) and one that he genuinely favours.

The main PA array hangs were L-Acoustics V-DOSC, which Findlay felt were ideal for the smaller rooms and concert hall venues that constituted the majority of this tour. They usually used 12 elements a side, often ground stacked, with ARCS as lip fills across the front of stage.

Sometimes they took advantage of being able to fly, and also of the flown house arrays where available. This happened at the previous show to the one I visited in Newcastle at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, where it made complete sense to hook into their L-Acoustics ARCS system and use the house flown arrays.

Findlay is using a Digidesign D-Show console at FOH — a compact, space saving solution with great functionality. He particularly likes the drag-and-drop features to move set lists around, and the ability to easily rename cues.

As it’s also possible to use third party plug-ins for all the output processing and EQ, he’s using Sony Oxford (now Sonox) for this, partly because of his Gabriel connections (the artist has a Sony Oxford console), and he’s also using Line 6 delays as plug-ins.

The only outboard effect device they carry with them is a legendary Eventide H3000 harmoniser — loved for its warm, natural sound.

On Goldfrapp’s vocals, Findlay uses the Sonox dynamics and EQ, some reverb and the occasional touch of (Line 6) delay. There is abundant processing on some of the keyboard parts, so much of his time is consumed with balancing that with some of the live processing elements on Goldfrapp’s vocals.

Goldfrapp is also very specific about certain sections of the vocal that she likes either laden with reverb or dry, so much attention to detail is needed.

Her microphone is a Shure Beta 57, chosen largely because she has a strong and distinctive, but not overly loud voice. Apparently she also has the rare capacity to sound good whatever mic she’s using.

As one might expect, there are a few quirky moments in the mix, such as a reversed reverb on her vocal in ‘Bird’. Findlay has also done a fair amount of work with Gregory in the studio, and so is familiar with their language and modus operandi when it comes to sonic issues.

The intricate mix ranged from incredible fragility to loud and mega assertive for the dancey end of the scale, all crystal clear, perfectly proportioned and produced with passion.

The room in the Sage Theatre was extremely detailed acoustically and the sound incisively clear — “a bit like HD TV,” said Findlay, elucidating that you could hear all the components very clearly despite the bottom end below 70Hz “rolling round a bit!”

A FINE CREW
For Findlay, as both a live and a studio engineer, playing a wide range of concert halls has been a real treat, and he was very complimentary about Brit Row’s crew members Chris ‘Chopper’ Morrison and Barry ‘Sir Barrald of Barringford’ MacLeod.

Monitor engineer Seamus Fenton also came onboard earlier this year, after being recommended by Brit Row. He uses a Yamaha PM1D console. With 48 mixes, Fenton said it’s the only desk big enough to deal with the six-piece band and Goldfrapp, plus the 16-piece orchestra and choir that perform at selected gigs on the schedule.

To keep everything consistent, he needed a desk on which he could programme everything. Fenton still loves the PM1D it even though it’s “now getting a bit cumbersome and old”.

He’s using all the onboard effects and just carrying a post TC6000 reverb, mainly for Goldfrapp. Fenton also uses a one-channel strip of an SSL studio desk as the pre-amp for Goldfrapp’s mic which is independent of both his and the FOH desk.

All seven performers are on Sennheiser G2 IEM systems, all with stereo mixes, and there are also two technical IEM mixes, one shared between guitar tech Mick Winder and drum tech/stage manager Pat Baker, and one for MIDI playback tech Dan Roe.

The end section of the PM1D is devoted to the crew’s funky ‘shout’ system, which allows line checks to be completely silent and self contained, and is designed to always be audible above the mix.

Fenton’s monitor mix is a very delicate and extremely busy affair, with Goldfrapp needing constant attention with her mix, keeping him on his toes! He steps through his voluminous notes on a laptop running PowerPoint to ensure everything is to hand and ultra well-organised in monitor world.

As we went to press, Goldfrapp’s touring schedule saw the band in the middle of a North American leg which is followed by dates in Australia before returning to the UK in October.

TPi
Photography by Louise Stickland