LONDON – The Scissor Sisters are touring with louvered looks for a "peek-a-boo" effect. Lite Alternative's Paul Normandale is including six floor-mounted impression LED heads in the motion-controlled set. The tour, which included an appearance at Glastonbury, is also including another nine impression 120RZ Zooms from the Lite Alternative inventory – adding to the fixtures they first incorporated into the set design for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs earlier in the year.
(All fixtures supplied by AC Entertainment Technologies.)
Like the XLs, the Zooms were mounted at the back of the stage, blasting light through four 8 x 8 sections of spinning aluminum louvered shutters, which are lifted on a Kinesys K2 motion control section.
After a three-year break, the New York-based Scissor Sisters were seeking something more sophisticated than a disco lighting set – but GLP's LED washlights still had to contend with a pair of 13W lasers, confetti machines and conventional automated spots and washes.
Tasked with animating Paul Normandale's creative set, which incorporate raunchy Mapplethorpe photos within the backdrop screens, was lighting director Glen Johnson, who credited the GLP XLs for their output, made possible with 240 Luxeon LEDs, and also their speed of response.
The cold and warm white capabilities (variable between 3200K and 7200K) was another feature he was able to exploit via the color temperature channel in the fixture control facilities as well as white and CTO on the color wheel.
"We find we can get most of what we need from the color temperature channel," he said.
"There is not a great deal of space behind the louvers, but depth-wise, these are tiny," Normandale said.
Although the combination of XLs and 120RZs dominate the back lighting, they are joined by conventional automated overheads, some keylights and four double i-Pix BB4 washlights (fitted with barn doors) – not to mention the lasers, which were supplied by SFX of Chicago and operated by David Kennedy.
Both Coldplay, whose tours he has supported, and Scissor Sisters are managed by Dave Holmes. This is Paul Normandale's first time out with the Scissor Sisters.
"This time they wanted to get away from ‘disco' and wanted a darker look … something more structured," Normandale said. "It's quite a flamboyant show, but the premise is like a ‘peek-a-boo' set."
At Brixton Academy's warm-up dates, the six floor-mounted XLs acted as cyc lights (with the louvers down) and then backlit the five-piece band fronted by Ana Matronik and Jake Shears once the Kinesys system had raised the louvered sections, mounted on a sub truss, and ‘parked' at variable heights (over a full travel distance of 27 feet).
Glen Johnson said that the impressions reminded him of the old fast mirror scanning effects, and that the power generated enables it to produce an excellent strobing effect.
"It's an extremely fast head, really small and light, so you can do things that would not be possible with conventional moving heads. They are extremely responsive – and the dimmer is pretty damn good."
He is also impressed with the colors, which he tends to use individually – for example, working on a CTO look for one song, moving to CTB quarter strength on another, and then finally to a red range.
GLP's Mark Ravenhill first introduced Lite Alternative to GLP's impression family when when Paul Normandale was designing a show for Antony & The Johnsons.
"Everyone was looking for an LED product that was quick and stable – and as soon as Mark arrived, it gave GLP a huge presence," said Normandale. "Now these impressions are being used everywhere."
"Lite Alternative have always been a very progressive company, and having a rental house in the north of England with such a wide range of our inventory is very gratifying," said Ravenhill.
For more information, please visit www.glp.de.
