More details from Siyan (www.siyan.co.uk):
In Europe, the lighting design continues the concept of a large ‘specials’ package which started during the band’s summer festival tour.
It also sees a continuance of the successful on-going working relationship between Colin Ross and Siyan which dates back seven or so years including several Ross designed tours for The Manic Street Preachers, Travis and others.
The Editors 2013 summer festival rig featured lots of Robe LEDWash 600 and 1200s as well as PAR cans and proved extremely versatile, with Ross creating ambience and texturing with the interplay between tungsten and LED lightsources.
When it came to this tour Ross stayed with this provocative, more moody theme of lighting – the band like lots of shadows and silhouettes and heavy back lighting.
He started with a white backdrop upstage and dotted several scaffolding towers around the performance space, which are rigged with another mix of tungsten and LED sources, effectively creating layers of lighting and texturing.
The LED moving lights on this section of the tour are Robe’s LEDWash 600s. Sixteen short nosed PAR cans and 8 redheads make up the tungsten elements, all complemented by four Atomic strobes.
The towers are arranged tightly around the backline so they are integrated with the band, offering plenty of intimate looks and the varying lightsources providing plenty of drama.
Siyan made up custom brackets to allow easy rigging of the fixtures to the scaff towers, helping to make the set up a very quick and efficient operation for Ross – who is a fully working LD – and his crew mate and Lighting Technician, Ioannis Simantiris.
At each venue, they also hook the house overhead rig into Ross’s ChamSys MagicQ console and wing. This is used to provide red and blue washes while all the effects and special looks are created using the touring rig.
The basics of the design are that it should look interesting and different as well as being infinitely scalable to provide a core rig in any venue whatever the size – be it a small club or an arena – of which they are playing both types and everything in between on the 9 week tour!
When they reach the UK leg, Siyan will add production front and back trusses containing more LEDWashes, redheads and strobes.
Ross really enjoys working with Siyan for a number of reasons.
“They are a small and personable enough company to take a real interest in all the tours going out and large enough to supply all the latest technology,” he comments adding, “The kit is in great condition, service is always excellent and everyone in the company is really friendly”.
The account is managed at Siyan by Jez Johnstone, who comments, “Working with Colin is always inventive and rewarding. Whether it’s for the Manic Street Preachers or, in this case, The Editors Colin always manages to come up with something fresh and new. His designs are unique and generally reflect his quirky outlook and oeuvre.”
