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Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

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Lighting Co

Bandit Lites

Venue

Various (Tour)

Crew

Lighting Designer: Andrew Liddle

Lighting Programmers: Paul Bird, Andrew Liddle

Tour Manager: Ryan Westbrook

Stage Manager: Merve Pearson

Desk & Drapes: Hawthorn (UK)

Gear

1          Avolites Arena console

6          Elation Paladins

4          Claypaky Sharpys

4          Philips Showline SL Nitro 510C

Tour Notes:

The U.S. tour, in support of the British band’s 2017 album, The Punishment of Luxury, ran from March 6-April 14. PLSN caught up with LD Andrew Liddle at the March 27 show at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco. There, the group’s co-founders Andy McCluskey (vocals, bass) and Paul Humphreys (keyboards, vocals) played with Stuart Kershaw (drums) and Martin Cooper (keyboards, saxophone) performing material from their current album “The Punishment Of Luxury” as well as the familiar hits – So In Love, If You Leave, Locomotion, Electricity, Dreaming, and many others for a night of singing and dancing to the English electronic pop group.

“The design for the present tour is a scalable version of the tour last fall in the U.K. and Europe, with the same three elements behind the band risers,” LD Andrew Liddle told PLSN. “For this album tour, there was a deliberate removal of a video element, unlike the previous tours, reverting back to a more central focus on the band hopefully, especially for some of the quieter songs in the set.

“I have always tried to incorporate any ideas forthcoming from the band,” Liddle continued. “With the passing of time, they seem to have left me more and more to my own devices. The main influence behind this tour was the colors of the album sleeve, and an angular abstract “O”, “M”, “D” created by the drape elements.”

“Mike Golden at Bandit Lites was a great help coming up with options for lighting the drape elements which was the main thing we were struggling, deciding what fixture to go with,” Liddle added. “Mike came up with the Elation Paladins as a good fixture for this. Having not used them before we were extremely fortunate to get hold of one of the first demo units from Dave Martin at Elation UK to test and program color, beam and shutter palettes prior to the tour. I had used Bandit years ago, both in the UK and Ireland but never previously in the US. Our tour manager Ryan Westbrook suggested them, having worked with them on other tours. I must say I have found their advice, service, prep and support second to none and I’m looking forward to working with them again soon.”

More OMD tour photos from Steve Jennings: