San Holo’s ‘Existential Dance Music Tour’ featured high-octane production from start to finish. The 33-show run featured a production which heavily utilised the ADJ Jolt Series of multifunctional LED fixtures.
The rig featured Jolt Bar FX, Jolt 300 and Jolt Panel FX fixtures, which were utilised almost continuously throughout each concert.
The responsibility for managing this production fell to Jeff Meuzelaar, who has served as San Holo’s Tour & Production Manager since 2018, making him one of the artist’s longest serving team members. Meuzelaar’s company, Pinnacle Productions started out in 2014 hosting EDM shows and events, first in South Dakota and then expanding into neighbouring states. Having forged relationships with many artists during these early years, Meuzelaar and his team began to be asked to provide production for their North American tours. Since then, the company has evolved into a full-service tour management company, providing planning, production, and staffing services for a wide variety of artists.
Kyle Kegan was contracted as Show Designer. His lighting plot involved surrounding San Holo’s central performance space with fixtures to allow for big looks while keeping attention focused on the lone artist. Central to Kegan’s vision was an LED strobe / pixel bar that could be used to frame the performance space, however, to achieve this, he needed the fixture in a significant quantity.
“Kegan was originally looking at another fixture option but, in the quantities he wanted, it simply wouldn’t have worked within the tour’s budget,” explained Meuzelaar. “However, during the conversation I mentioned that we own the ADJ Jolt 300 and have found them to be very reliable, so he jumped straight on Google and found the Jolt Bar FX! We ordered a couple of samples to be sent to Kegan’s studio so that he could try them out and investigate how they fit together. He thought they looked great and did exactly what he wanted them to do, so – based on our positive experience of the 300 – we went ahead and purchased 32 units for our rental stock.”
“The Jolt Bar FX is a very versatile fixture that allows us to create a lot of different looks,” commented Meuzelaar. “It gives us the dynamic pixel chasing effects we needed and is bright enough for those accent punches of white. We’ve also found it to be a really solid fixture, we haven’t had to tap into our stock of spare fixtures at all.”
He was so impressed with the Jolt Bars that he also selected the Jolt Panel FX variant to serve a particular need for big strobe punches that would fill the whole stage. These units each feature a central strip of 48 5-Watt cool white SMD LEDs, surrounded on both sides by a total of 800 0.3W RGB SMD LEDs, grouped into 6 white and 40 colour zones. Four fixtures were mounted underneath San Holo’s blow-through riser, angled straight up, while four additional units were rigged at the bottom of each truss tower, angled across the stage and out towards the audience.
“When it comes to the Jolt Panel FX,” commented Meuzelaar, “the first thing to say is that it is really bright. And that’s what we really wanted: bright and reliable! It’s a solid LED strobe at an affordable price point. As with the bar, it’s also very versatile, which was another factor that contributed to our decision to invest in 32 for our rental inventory.”
In addition to the bars and panels, Kegan’s design also made use of ADJ’s original Jolt 300. This compact fixture offers a similar combination of LEDs, with a central strip of 144 x 0.5-Watt cool white diodes surrounded on both sides by a total of 144 x 0.5-Watt RGB color mixing variants. For the Existential Dance Music Tour, 18 of these fixtures were incorporated into the steps at the front of the main riser. These units were fitted with acrylic diffusers and the steps were dressed with transparent white fabric, which caused the entire front of the riser to glow when they were all triggered simultaneously.
When it came to programming the show, Kegan was aided by Blake Addington, who also went out on the road with the tour as the Lighting Operator. The show predominately ran from a timecode, which synchronised the lighting and video elements to San Holo’s musical performance, however Blake did have some punt control to customise each performance on the fly.
The Jolt fixtures were utilised throughout the entire show, both for strobe flashes and more subtle pixel-mapped effects. The Panels in the blow-through risers were used sparingly for key moments when San Holo was specifically highlighted, however the units on the truss towers were used extensively to fill the stage with strobe hits.
The bars were used for almost every song, to create a wide variety of accents and build up looks, while the Jolt 300s served to draw attention to the riser through a variety of different coloured chase patterns and white strobe effects.
“As San Holo’s programmer and operator for the Existential Dance Music Tour, I was truly impressed by the ADJ Jolt Series fixtures,” commented Addington. “They were very bright and held up very well on the road. Compared to the [more expensive fixture that was originally spec’d], the Jolt Bar FX is a great fixture and is fun to program and work around. Kyle and I built our fixture types for each fixture inside Grand MA3 and, once we figured it out, we were very impressed. I would recommend this fixture to any tour wanting a bunch of pixel/strobe fixtures for any unique design.”
“For EDM tours, we’re always asked for way too many fixtures with not enough crew and not enough budget!” Meuzelaar concluded. “When we have an ambitious show design, which has over 100 fixtures just on the ground package, my challenge is to find the best solution to give the designer the performance and quantity they want while remaining within a reasonable tour budget. That’s what the ADJ Jolt Series has allowed me to do for this tour. ADJ products are very much at the forefront of the show, they are used for pretty much every snare hit throughout the set and are a vital component of this tour.”
