Following the release of Clouds (The Mixtape) in October, US rapper Nathan Feuerstein, better known by his stage name, ИF, hit the road with a raw and stylish production design featuring over 200 Robe lighting fixtures, curated by Musical Director, Chris Denholm and Lighting Designer, Clay Joiner.
The lighting rig included 64 Robe Tarrantula wash beams, 128 Spikies, and 16 BMFL Spots along with two BMFL FollowSpots on a RoboSpot remote follow spotting system.
The design process for Clouds (The Mixtape) was architectural in form but functional as well to assist with the artist’s impactful vocal delivery. ‘Big box’ geometry came in the shape of a large upstage screen, with lighting tasked with maximising the space.
The design collective introduced a modular riser system with the drum kit in the middle for Rico Nichols. A small thrust at the front enabled ИF to get out into the fans, and a toaster lift at upstage center added dynamism to entrances and exits. The design featured multiple paths and runways to traverse the space and a clean, uncluttered symmetrical environment that could be big, small or whatever was needed.
With a heavy emphasis on upstage and back lighting, two pods of four by four Tarrantulas were positioned upstage left and right with four in total, flanking the screen – 128 Spikies were deployed in eight raked Svoboda-style pods – again in the four by four format – above the stage. With this concentration of Spikies, Joiner could programme kinetic effects to match the rhythm and beat of the music.
Around 14 BMFL WashBeams were spaced out along the lowest section of the upstage truss, with the two BMFL FollowSpots in the center for backlight.
Joiner praised Robe fixtures for their “versatility, speed, output and clarity and the excellent range of highly distinctive light sources,” he said. “The single beam is great and so are Spikies working together in batches.”
According to the LD, Tarrantulas were specified for their powerful output. “Their extra ring of colour and LEDs is fantastic,” Denholm commented, praising lighting vendor, Solotech. “It’s a great fixture to programme and the flower effect is also excellent.”
BMFL WashBeams’ discharge lamp at the back of the design provided contrast to the set. “As a flagship moving light, this is the one,” he added. “I do love BMFLs, they are simply a wonderful, intense, and no-nonsense fixture.”
The two-upstage center BMFL FollowSpots were chosen for backlighting ИF for practicality and ease of use. “The overall RoboSpot control footprint is really small, so the BaseStation sat at dimmer beach and was run by one of our techs,” explained Denholm.
Joiner controlled the RoboSpot parameters via an MA Lighting grandMA2 console – apart from iris and zoom, which were tweaked by the operator as needed. The LD pre-visualised the lighting for 10 days in Solotech’s Nashville office using Vectorworks and imported the show into Syncronorm Depence2 via MVR, a process he relished, and one that enabled him to arrive at the eight-days of full production rehearsals in Nashville with a lot of content and ideas in hand.
