LOS ANGELES – The Glitch Mob’s latest tour design includes a customized, painted set piece dubbed “the blade.” It houses both lighting and musical instruments. At the launch of the tour, LD Martin Phillips added four High End Systems Shapeshifter C1 fixtures.
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Over the past decade, The Glitch Mob have turned heads and blown minds with their infectious electronic music. With laptops and MIDI controllers as their sonic weapons, the trio’s technical chops are far above that of most mainstream musicians. The group’s latest tour includes a new musical element they’ve named ‘The Blade’, a customized, painted set piece that houses both lighting and musical instruments. At the launch of the tour, Lighting Designer Martin Phillips added four High End Systems SHAPESHIFTER C1 fixtures as a key element for the show.
Martin comments, “They’re quite technologically savvy, and also have very strong ideas about their visual presentation. I came onboard for their first real tour, and it was very much ‘what can you do with the bits and pieces we have’ – so we cobbled together a few custom set pieces with LED fixtures that they had been buying along the way. We added some video tiles, and that got them off on their first tour. After the release of their latest album, they got back in touch with me, and we decided to try and push things a little bit farther. They created a whole new playback system from scratch, so we spent a lot of time talking about how to integrate everything. We wanted a very visual piece that wasn’t just ‘off the shelf’ video tiles and such. Once we settled into a design, then of course the budget dictated what we could and couldn’t do. I wasn’t sure it was going to work until I saw it in the rehearsal studio, and was quite pleasantly surprised when these elements worked. It’s been an exciting journey with them. They’re smart guys and are very dedicated, and they really try to push things, so it’s been fun.”
Martin says the SHAPESHIFTERs were a product he really wanted to include. “I had seen them and knew of their impending release. I really liked the fact that it was a big grouped light … a huge source, but then you had a lot more control over it as you needed it. I liked the movement; about 20 years ago there was a product that had a similar movement, but it used moving mirrors on a rotating piece, so you could get that flowering look out of the beams. I had always loved that, so when I learned of SHAPESHIFTER I was really keen to try it out. For the first round of the tour they were really used as a big grouped light in the back, but on the last run I got the opportunity to finesse them and get more out of the fixture. They definitely weren’t just a one trick pony on the show. I really like the SHAPESHIFTER. It’s not a small fixture but you get a lot out of it. I’ve really enjoyed working with them. I’ve got a lot of new ideas, so I’m keen to try them out on something else.”
The lighting package for the tour is supplied by DPS, with LMG providing video. The team also worked closely with Accurate Staging to create the set and ‘The Blade’. Martin adds, “We put lighting fixtures in there and wrapped them in video, and integrated the band’s touch screens into the set. The goal was to make it look like it was all one piece. The four SHAPESHIFTERs are arranged on road cases along the back on the upstage wall. Initially, I was looking for that big punch out them, and then found I could do a lot more with the fixture. I was able to match a lot of the gobo movement and beam looks but on a much bigger brute force level. I was surprised at how much movement I could get, and how I could match the looks of the hard edge fixtures in the rest of the rig.”
Lighting Director Joe Finn is operating the show via timecode on a trusty Hog 3 Full Boar console. Martin says, “We use the Full Boar, it’s been our workhorse since they were first released. It’s just rock solid. We wanted to use the full blown Hog 4’s but everything had to go on one truck, and every little bit of space counted. We’re using OSC and MIDI triggering; we are really pushing its capabilities because we’re talking to so many different pieces in addition to DMX. The Full Boar has been the backbone of all our programming so it was a no brainer.”
Joe Finn says the SHAPESHIFTERs are “a huge part of the show, because of their brightness, beam size and the uniqueness of the aerial effects they create. Martin wisely doesn’t use them all the time; they’re only used about six times during the show, and it gives a really nice contrast to all the other fixtures we have. They’re awesome – they’re huge in the air, and they punch through all the other LED lights and spot fixtures there.”
