Arctic Monkeys

The Arctic Monkeys ended the European leg of their frenetic Humbug tour at the O2 in Dublin, where TPi caught up with an elated production crew. A recent report revealed the Sheffield outfit was the sixth hottest concert ticket seller of 2009, on a list topped by stadium gold-miners U2.

    With a completely non-moving, conventional fixture lighting rig that was radically re-arranged by a CyberHoist motion control system, and the new L-Acoustics K1 line array, there was much to discuss.

    Our conversations began with lighting designer Andi Watson, among whose other recent credits is the extraordinary retina- and convention-challenging 3D LED tube design for Radiohead’s recent tour. He explained the rationale behind the Arctic Monkeys’ arena design.

    “The design for this tour is a sort of progression of how I’ve been working for them in the past,” he said. “The first thing to say is that the band hate moving lights and LED fixtures, essentially because of their current ubiquity. That gave us a great challenge: move back a generation in lighting equipment terms, but keep the show really dynamic.

    “You have 16 or 17 year old kids who’ve never seen PAR cans and love some of our old looks, because to them it’s all been moving lights, LEDs, strobes and video. Ours is a very different look for that generation: Neg Earth have supplied PAR cans, Source Fours, ACLs and 8-lites with scrollers, as well as two rows of ADB Svoboda battens, which are wonderful things — so different from anything else out there.

    “This is organised as basic PAR colour washes from the front truss using 8-lites with scrollers for audience lighting, and a five-colour PAR wash for the front.

    “The 10° Source Fours on the mid and upstage lighting trusses provide key lights for each band member, and on those trusses there’s also a number of ACL bars, each individually run, and the 11 Svobodas, in two rows across, which create a big block of light coming down. They’re very powerful, very distinctive, and I love them.

    “Something that’s very important to the band is the use of floor lighting to create shadows of them on the white upstage cyc, itself side-lit by 16 more PARs with scrollers. We use a combination of Lowell Omnis and PAR 64s with scrollers, one for each band member, to do this and frequently the only key lighting on the band is from the front omnis or PARs.

    “But to get a lot of variety into the looks, we had to get creative,” he laughed, “and the CyberHoists are very crucial to this design. Matching the audience’s expectations of shows these days, yet without moving lights or LEDs, meant that I wanted to introduce a dynamic element that met the band’s likes and dislikes.

    “My ‘big trick’ on this is that while I’m not allowed moving lights I designed 10 big circular lighting clusters that, using CyberHoist, we can individually position and point at different band members for different songs.

    “The idea was to turn the PAR clusters into effectively big repositionable light sources using a highly accurate control system, that could move very, very slowly and controllably in terms of the acceleration and deceleration as well as just normal motion speed, and which could do some fairly complex moves in terms of relative speed.

    “Each cluster contains five CP60 PARs with scrollers, all individually controllable, surrounded by a ring of PAR 36 ACLs. So we can texture the beam of each cluster by changing the intensities and colours of the five individual beams. And because CyberHoist is so flexible and repeatable, we could make the same look changes work easily with different trim heights.

    “With three CyberHoist pick-ups per cluster, one at top centre and two at the bottom on either side, we can vary the clusters and we can angle it left and right, which gives us a bunch of preset focuses with the positions on each band member, and we pull out of those positions — just as you would with moving lights — at different heights to create big band washes.

    “The whole stage is transformed by the changing cluster positions, yet the moving element is only PAR cans, with the CyberHoist making it look different for every song.

    “Apart from two live moves they normally reposition in between songs, and it’s very important that they reposition completely accurately and without appearing to move, which meant no jerking, no sudden stops on the motors.

    “So CyberHoist does exactly what I need for this show. It can actually do a huge amount more and maybe we’ll move that on a little in later shows. But for the moment it’s an incredibly precise, wonderfully controllable and reliable tool.”

    The CyberHoist system was supplied by Flashlight. Programming was performed with CyberHoist operator Sebastian Habrechtsmeier. Watson explained: “Sebastian and I sat in rehearsals for a while programming, just like you would a moving light rig. Sadly, he got ill halfway through the tour and had to go home, and he’s been replaced by quite wonderfully able colleagues.

    “We had a couple of shows where we had to reduce the trim heights, so Sebastian generated a lower set of preset focuses. But whilst the original programming was kind of complex, the actual day-to-day running is very simple. It’s easy to change the trim height at load-in and the whole show is set for that day in seconds.”
   
VIDEO
Also perceptively simple and old-school is the show’s video element — although a world of technology and programming works backstage to make it appear so. Four camera operators, led by camera director Rik Schoutsen, each control two remote pan/tilt/zoom robocams. These and three fixed cameras are fed to Catlayst v4 Pro media servers equipped with multiple Active Silicon capture cards.

    Controlled from the grandMA lighting desk, the Catalysts output separate feeds to the stage right and left 11mm Barco FLED screens, each hung in a vertical 3:1 aspect ratio chosen “to keep the video element close to the band and avoid as much as possible the audience having to choose between watching the band or the screens,” said Watson.

    This entails Schoutsen and the team framing each shot precisely as the side-screen images can be anywhere from the whole frame to just a quarter frame. “We’re manipulating video in a relatively straightforward way, but with a lot of attention to composition and colour, using a lot of duotones to keep the video in harmony and in sympathy with the lighting, maybe kind of more ‘Art Mag’ than I-Mag,” commented Watson.

    Cameras, control and catalysts were from Scenographic whilst the screens and processing were supplied by XL Video.

    Steve Kellaway heads the Monkeys’ lighting crew which included Jim Mills on dimmers (a big task on this tour), Alan McGregor and John Dall, together with XL Video screen techs Pieter Laleman and Benjamin van Deynse.
 
DIGITAL MEETS K1
Manning a 48-channel Digidesign console at FOH — complete with custom built ‘beer hood’ following a particularly boisterous gig when a desk got drenched — is Matthew Kettle, while Will Doyle mixes monitors on a Soundcraft Vi6.

    Nick Pain is FOH system tech and system designer, in charge of the new L-Acoustics K1 arrays from tour sound supplier SSE, along with PA tech Steve Mottrum and monitor tech Kevin Sparks.

    On stage are the core four-piece Arctic Monkeys, augmented by newcomer John Ashton on keys, guitar and BVs, recently elevated from his long-time job as Arctics’ FOH engineer to actual band member.

    The stage set-up is equally classic (and all wired) with Sennheiser 935s on the vocals, a 945 hypercardioid for Alex Turner (lead vocals & guitar), and a mixture of classic and new Sennheisers for the backline, with 421s and 609s for guitars and drums, a pair of beyerdynamic M201s on the snare, SM81 on hi-hats, 904s on toms and 4050s on overheads.

    Sennheiser G2 (soon to be uprated to G3) wireless in-ears serve all the band bar drummer Matt Helder, whose rig is wired, and guitarist Jamie Cook, on wedges.

    Onstage levels are high, said Kettle, with ARCS and dV-SUB sidefills delivering high levels while maintaining a low profile for arena shows with seats sold around the stage sides. [See side feature for Kettle’s reaction to the K1 system].

    Where effects are concerned, both engineers opt to use their respective desks’ onboard processing — mostly Waves, Platinum and Classic plug-ins for the Digidesign, many emulating classic reverbs and compressors.

    Ironically, Kettle added: “I’m using quite a lot of old vintage compression plug-ins and stuff to try and get that sort of warmer, rich sound, and some harmonic distortion as well to give it grit, make it sound a little less digital.”

    A Pro Tools HD system records every show. “It’s so convenient to be able to record and do the virtual soundcheck thing when I need to.” Doyle’s Soundcraft, similarly, provides the requisite processing and EQ.

    Production manager Peter van der Velde summed up: “It was a challenge putting this tour together. The band have a very distinctive idea of what they like and don’t like. Andi has been very good at filtering these views into a show for which we used top quality gear delivering a vintage-looking show, which in the current touring climate is unusual and original.

    “He knows how to achieve what he likes and specified the CyberHoist system for the show, and it provided what he was looking for, while I was also very pleased with the back up and co-operation from Flashlight.

    “I must also say that I’m very impressed with the quality and service provided by SSE. My experience of them dated from the late ’90s and weren’t great ones, but they have turned things around; the equipment is great and above all the crew were fantastic.

    “The same goes really for all the crew and companies involved. The F lite screens from XL were a great addition to the show and the XL crew were great team players and assisted other departments when necessary. All in all, I couldn’t be more happy with the way the tour’s turned out.”
TPi