You Am I hit the road in April and May with their Hi Fi Daily Double Down Tour, playing Hi Fi Way and their third album, Hourly Daily.
Lighting designer Craig Boyes was not given a specific brief, but after listening to the albums, it was apparent that Hourly Daily had a narrative, whereas Hi-Fi Way was much more of a rock album.
“That informed what I did design-wise with it because I wanted to have quite a different look for the two parts of the show,” explained Craig. “So, the first half’s pretty pictures reflect that narrative idea using gobos and vibrant colour, whereas the second half utilizes a white base and accents of the colours from the Hi-Fi Way album cover.”
The tour utilizes in-house flown rigs with a touring floor package from Phaseshift Productions comprising 13 x Martin MAC Aura XIPs, six GLP JDC1s and three Portman P2 Hexalines.
“Instead of being positioned vertically, I was going to have all three Hexalines flat across the back because I wanted that tungsten glow coming from the floor as a blinder look but not a traditional in-your-face blinder look,” described Craig. “I get enough of that out of the JDC1s anyway. The P2s give you that nice tungsten feel, and due to the way it ended up rigged, I changed the centre one to be vertical behind Rusty on drums.”
The show features two different backdrops created by Reveal Productions. The first backdrop is the cover art from Hourly Daily. The second half is the coloured panels from Hi Fi Way.
“I can crop it to suit with the focus on the rooftop look, the telephone pole, and the vertical pipes I’m using with the MAC Auras on them emulates that look, so you get this branches in the sky look,” explained Craig. “I like wash lights at different heights through the rig, so you’re not just looking at a wash light; it becomes a dynamic part of the picture you’re looking at.
“Because I can control the cells individually, I can put little trickles into them. I didn’t go to the pixel mapping, but I’m using the macros in there, and it just allows you to give a wash light a bit more shape.
“I didn’t want to be flashy, and I looked at going into the filaments and doing all that sort of thing. But given the timeline, I didn’t want to go down that path. I didn’t feel it was right for this show. But certainly, being able to animate the cells is excellent and does lift them. It gives you a real ability to bring them to life.”
The second half is the big ray look with the opening song in open white, everything in a fixed position chasing and pulsing. From there on, it’s a traditional rock show with accents of colour referenced from the second backdrop.
The GLP JDC1s are used as strobes and wash, lighting the backdrop one moment and then flipping around to be a backlight or a strobe. Craig occasionally adds the ‘trickle’ to them to get that animated pixel look.
“There’s a whole bunch of looks, especially in the first half, where I’m lighting the backdrop, but I’ve got a ripple going on,” he said. “The backdrop appears to move rather than just being a straight wash. I like the backdrop to be kinetic.”
For control, Craig was running an ETC Full Boar 4 console, declaring it was his last tour using it as he recently purchased an MA Lighting MA3 command wing.
“If I’d got it two weeks earlier, I probably would have done this show on that,” he added. “I’ve been mucking around since January on the MA3, and I like it; it’s a strong platform. I’m a Hog aficionado; I love them, but I just wanted more buttons, especially in today’s climate, where you’ve got multi-part fixtures and need a level of granular control. I don’t want to give myself another bunch of banks and push another button to get to something, especially in a show environment.
“At the end of the day, a lighting console is your interface with the work. It’s how you bring pictures to life, and the easier that is, and the less time you have to think about number crunching or coding to focus on the show, the better the console is, in my opinion.”
Craig’s next project will be a tour of the US with Jet.
