LONDON – Steven Abbiss, LD for Fatboy Slim, relies upon locally-sourced gear for the British DJ's busy gig schedule, which includes international festivals, headlining gigs and, quite often, visits to two or three different countries on the same weekend. Abbiss' standard spec calls for an Avolites Tiger Touch lighting console, 30 Martin Professional Atomic strobes, 34 1200-series Spot and 44 1200-series wash moving lights, five large flower effects, two Lightning Strikes strobes and 44 LED battens, 34 4-cell moles and four Studio Due CityColor wash fixtures or an equivalent source for backlighting from the floor.
Abbiss carries his own 60-pound Tiger Touch console to some of the shows. At this year's Heineken Open'er Festival in Gdynia, Poland, Abbiss ran all 12 data control lines via Ethernet out of the desk and used the touch screen to make a basic schematic of their standard rig and patch in the fixtures from the event rig to match, so it worked with their drawing. He credited this function as helpful, adding that it's "really quick" to change fixture types.
"The touch screen manipulation is absolutely brilliant," he said, and also had good things to say about the ability to quickly change sequence speeds and parameters, and the Instant Color Mix on the touch screen. "The response time is excellent and the new Titan software environment is extremely intuitive," he added.
There are 4 DMX outputs and 12 DMX universes are available when using ArtNet.
Abbiss' design for Fatboy Slim tends to be flexible and dynamic, in keeping with Fatboy's eclectic mix of baseline classics and contemporary dance beats. There are certain cues for specific anthemic moments in the set, but it's also a show that lends itself to improvisation.
Abbiss has also ordered a Titan Mobile console that runs with a laptop version of the software for an even more lightweight yet powerful solution well-suited to gigs using local productions. Titan Mobile comes complete with live playbacks, solo flash buttons and user programmable buttons and attribute controllers to speed programming. He used a beta version of Titan mobile on the South American leg of the tour in November.
For more information, please visit www.avolites.com.
