HSL supplied lighting equipment for LD Davy Sherwin and the recent We Are Scientists UK tour, which was sold out and hugely successful for the hot New York indie rockers. "It's great to work with Davy again," says HSL's project Manager Mike Oates. "He has a very creative eye and can make an expedient sized rig go a long way. We supplied Snow Patrol for him throughout 2006 and 2007."
It was Sherwin's first tour with the band and his design was based on exploring the mixing of different qualities and textures of light emitted by LED and tungsten light sources. "I also wanted a bit of an ‘old-school’ feel," he explains, so there were quite a few PAR cans in the rig.
Upstage were four Litec wind-up towers at subtly different heights, with a total variation of about a foot. These introduced form and architecture to the stage. Attached to the top of each of these was a six-and-a-half-foot section of truss, each rigged with 2 Robe ColorWash 700E AT moving lights and 4 Showtec Sunstrips, with 10 individual channels of MR16 lights. Two of the Sunstrips were mounted vertically and two horizontally per tower, symmetrically hung but at different heights. Each tower also featured a bar of 4 PARs with narrow bulbs, focused ACL style. The PARs on the two offstage towers were all fronted by ChromaQ scrollers.
On the floor were 6 Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs, four positioned along the back and two at the side of stage for front cross lighting. These were used for powerful back light and aerial effects.
The main onstage effects lights consisted of a row of 6 i-Pix BB16s, just behind the backline, blasting through for seriously high impact LED effects. "They are great for specials and also as a general wash light," Sherwin elucidates, adding that because they also look like a Molefey, when ignited, there's always a big ‘wow’ factor. The output was so intense that he ran them at only 20 or 30 percent.
The BBs were mounted on their own lids to raise them just above the level of the backline. On the drum riser were 2 Atomic strobes. The front truss consisted of 2 bars of 6 PARs with medium flood bulbs, 4 Source Four Profiles, and six 2-lite Moles.
HSL supplied a new Avolites Pearl Expert to run all the lights, and a PixelDrive pixel-mapping computer to run video inputs into the Sunstrips. For the European leg of the tour, HSL supplied 6 BB16s and a Pearl, which Sherwin used as specials combined with the various house rigs.
The band were keen on the show containing lots of pinks and blues, and also on some of the more offbeat colors and hues that are a few shades removed for the saturates.
Sherwin worked with HSL's Rupert Reynolds on the tour, who he describes as “Absolutely brilliant in every way. HSL were excellent as usual," he comments, "Their attention to detail and the quality of the kit is excellent. We’ve needed very little support as everything worked so well." He adds that it was very useful for them to be able to set the full rig up at the HSL warehouse ahead of the tour, which had no production rehearsals.