Colour Sound Experiment (CSE) supplied lighting for five main ‘operated' stages and about 30 other performance areas dotted around the Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, UK site at the 2012 Secret Garden Party event, as the unique boutique festival celebrated its tenth year.
It is the second year that CSE has supplied lighting equipment for SGP, and a tip-top crew of 15 was once again chiefed by John Rickets. Battling with seriously wet weather on the set up and the resulting large volumes of mud, restricted access around the site made it an even more demanding task to ensure that all was rigged-and-ready for the sold-out festival to open on time.
The Great Stage was a G3 structure from G-Stages similar in shape to Glastonbury's Pyramid.
CSE supplied three sub-hung trusses which were populated with 12 Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1500s, 12 Robe LEDWash 1200s, 8 Showtec Sunstrips, six CP Sharpies, four Studio Due CS4 ACL bars, 12 x 2-lite Moles and eight ETC Source Four profiles for key lighting and specials.
CSE also dry-hired a quantity of its BT12 LED screen to Immersive, who provided production visuals for this stage throughout the Festival.
A festival ‘specials' lighting package was also supplied for Orbital, who headlined on the Saturday night with lighting designer Jonny Gaskell. CSE is supplying this same rig for all Orbital's summer festival work.
Chris Steel ran the Great Stage production lighting rig for CSE, using a Chamsys MagicQ200 console, and Toby Lovegrove was the main tech.
The Temple of Boom stage was a G2 structure from G-Stages which is the same shape and size as the Glade Stage at Glastonbury, which CSE is very familiar with.
Revellers were entertained throughout the weekend by a dazzlingly diverse line up of dance music curated by Eddy Temple Morris, Patron Saint of the Secret Garden Party.
Illumination was looked after by Phil Lee and Dan Williams for CSE, with a rig comprising ten CP Alpha Spot 1500s, 12 x Robe ColorWash 700E ATs, four Martin Professional MAC 250 Beams, twelve Sunstrips and a wide assortment of generics, plus an Avolites Pearl Expert and touch screen for control.
Lighting for the Where The Wild Things Are stage – an eclectic mix of new music from the darkly joyful to the bittersweet - was run by Kester McClure and Sarah Payne.
Kit included six MAC 250 Entours, six GLP Impression 120 RZs, Chroma-Q Color Force 72 LED battens, six Sunstrips and a bunch of generics – profiles, PARs and blinders, all controlled from an Avolites Tiger console. One of CSE's new Avolites Power Cube Extreme dimmer/distros was utilised here to handle all the power distribution.
Over in Wormford's Valley of The Antics arena a great line up of breaking DJs and live bands provided the freshest underground talent – all lit by CSE's Paul de Villiers (PDV) and Sam Akinwale.
The rig was designed to be as flexible as possible and included six 2-lites, sixteen Robe ColorWash and ColorSpot 575E ATs and a host of generics – PARs, ACLs and others - with a Pearl Expert for control.
The Oddball Dance Hall made its Secret Garden Party debut this year, remixing the worlds of Vintage and Global music and producing some truly interesting and unique results, interspersed with some lively circus and performance entertainment!
CSE's equally special lighting rig was co-ordinated by Stu Barr and James Haslem, featuring a front truss on stands, with Robe ColorWash 575E AT and MAC 250 Entour moving lights, 2-lite blinders, a wide selection of generics and an Avo Tiger for control.
Around the rest of the site, a massive amount of equipment was deployed. It varied from half a dozen PARs for basic tent lighting to coloured fluorescent installations into many of the bars, to the Coliseum stage, which was larger and lit with a mix of Aurora LED exterior PARs, Studio Due City Color 2500w lights, LED battens, complete with a Twin headed multi-coloured laser.
While these areas were all essentially self-running, CSE's Jenn Weber and Sumee Halliday kept a close eye every day and ensured that all the system ran with no glitches.
John Rickets comments, “The CSE team did a fantastic job of overcoming all the set up challenges and the short get in timescale to ensure that the stages looked great and ran smoothly throughout all four days. SGP is still definitely one of the best, most fun and different UK festivals of the season with which to be involved”.