More details from Entec (www.entec-soundandlight.com):
As one of the most influential and creative bands of the last 20 years, Blur have received numerous awards including Grammys, Brits, Ivor Novellos and NMEs, while their live career has spanned clubs, parks, dog-tracks, theatres, museums and arenas and embraced many truly memorable festival performances worldwide — including a historic Sunday night appearance at Glastonbury in 2009.
Following their ‘Outstanding Contribution to Music’ Brit Award of 2012, the band debuted two new songs at their sold-out and critically acclaimed show in Hyde Park which helped close the London Olympics, and went on to receive ‘Best Live Act’ at the 2012 Q Awards.
For this year’s tour dates, Entec Lighting is providing a festival specials package to lighting designer Dave Byars.
Byars has been lighting Blur’s live shows for 23 years and is still coming out with new and original ideas and enjoying the whole process of touring and doing gigs.
For this run of shows he designed eight truss towers on custom Entec touring bases for quick deployment, and these are stood upstage. From the center outwards are two at 4ft high, one at 5ft and one at 8ft, mirrored the other side.
On the top of each tower is a Vari*Lite VL3000 moving light. On the side of each is a PixelLine 1044 LED batten and on the front of each is an Atomic strobe and a 2-lite Mole.
On the upstage side of all eight towers — hidden from view – is a Robe LEDWash 600, used to highlight the painted Westway backdrop behind.
All the floor lighting is controlled via Byars’ own Avolites Sapphire Touch console and he also hooks the overhead ‘house’ rig in to this at each venue.
Entec’s Peter “Pepper” Schofield is the Tech.
Byars explains that the ethos behind this design is to keep it as visually clean and uncluttered as possible so the Westway backdrop is clearly visible as a primary visual element to the stage and performance.
The whole floor rig is also designed to be completely festival-friendly. For those shows which are ‘own headliners’ his overhead lighting spec is based on practicality and having a good chance of actually getting what you’d like in some of the more remote corners of the world!
