According to lighting designer Jake ‘Dutchy’ Bylsma, the Ocean Alley boys trust him with a lot of their show’s creative control.
“The band writes music and sends me recordings which I like to listen to with headphones on with no distractions, maybe go for a walk or sit somewhere,” remarked Dutchy. “I try to absorb and interpret what the music is saying, then imagine what the lights should look like on stage. I’ll make quick notes of song structure, basic ideas and concepts as I listen, then refine the lighting looks in 3D software as I go.”
A good example is OA’s newest tune “Touch Back Down”. Based on the video content the band had already released online, as well as the way the music sounded, Dutchy knew straight away that he wanted to try an emulate an “underwater” feel with the light show as much as possible.
“After building the new stage design in Capture 3D, I found that a combination of slowly rotating gobos, slow animation wheels, a light frost, and a subtle colour-shifting effect from Cyan to Blue best emulated the underwater look I was after,” he added.
For the new lighting rig design, Dutchy wanted to maintain programming flexibility for the older songs while also adding something fresh for the newer ones. Many of the previous lighting layouts have been mostly classic rock band “straight on” configuration, in a square format. Three risers, three lighting trusses, all in straight lines festival style. This time, Dutchy wanted to break that up a bit so they experimented with rotating the risers 45 degrees into a “Diamond” configuration, which of course also tied in nicely with the Lonely Diamond album name.
“I also split the overhead trusses and angled them to follow a similar shape to the risers to keep everything uniform,” said Dutchy. “The angled risers also means that my GLP X4 bars on the edges have a nice 45-degree tilt angle which makes for some very clean lighting shapes from a fixture that has tilt only.”
Dutchy’s biggest challenge with this current design was balancing the needs and requirements of all departments. OA is a six-piece band, there’s a lot of audio and backline gear going on. Both audio and backline departments have spacing and size requirements and he’s placing extra lights in their world. There have been many conversations and many iterations on spacing, heights, placements, etc to keep everyone happy with the layout with Dutchy thinking the whole team is happy with the result!
The original concept for the show’s much talked about ‘Infinity Mirrors’ came from Dutchy’s friend and colleague Sam Carroll back in 2019.
“We were brainstorming ideas for OA set pieces and I wanted something a little bit different to what I was used to seeing on shows recently,” explained Dutchy. “We started talking LED pixels, and at some point, Sam suggested we could build Infinity Mirrors, which tied in perfectly with the artwork for the OA track Infinity at the time. After many conversations, spreadsheets and pencil sketches – the band fell in love with the idea and we went for it. Sam designed and built the electronics in his workshop, while I designed and built the box enclosures in my dad’s shed in Ballarat (with a lot of help from my dad and brother).
“They’re quite a simple concept, a mirror panel at the rear, LED pixels in the middle, and a one-way mirror at the front. This trick creates an illusion of unlimited depth as the pixels reflect between the mirrors inside the box. We drive the RGB LED pixels using Resolume Arena 7 via Artnet.
Each mirror uses a Powercon and an Ethercon input, fed from a custom-built media server data rack built by Sam. The full pixel setup is spread over 14 universes, so we’ve built the system into a fully closed network that doesn’t talk to the rest of the lighting rig. I only send one control universe from the lighting console to the media server via 5pin DMX, the media server then sends 14 universes of Artnet directly to the mirrors via Ethernet on stage. This means we never have to rock up to a festival or venue and ask for 14 universes of spare Artnet, it’s a closed system with a single cable plug and go. I run my LED screen visuals in the same way.”
Sam has been on tour with them taking care of all things mirrors and Dutchy reports that he’s really happy with how they’ve turned out. It’s been satisfying to finally see these things actually out on shows after two years of designing and building them, he added.
Phaseshift supplied lighting for all of the shows, honouring a two-year-old booking for which Dutchy is very thankful saying that Graz and Goldie smashed every show and he appreciates their attention to detail.
The rig includes:
8x Martin MAC Viper Profiles (front wash/spot/specials)
14x Claypaky Sharpy Plus (overhead stage spots/gobos/specials)
14x Claypaky B-Eye K10 (overhead stage wash/eye candy)
20x GLP X4bar20 (floor uplight, pixel effects)
24x Duet Blinders (floor + roof, for musical accents and audience engagement)
4x 1.2k Fresnels (warm side wash to blend with the coloured front light)
7x Custom “Infinity Mirror” set pieces.
2x MDG ATMe (Hazers)
3x Look Solutions Unique (Hazers)
1x MA Lighting MA2 full size (lighting console)
1x MA Lighting MA2 Light console (backup lighting console)
Luke Fenech from Blaso Pyrotechnics supplied cold sparks, hot sparks, low fog, flames and airbursts for the run also honouring a two-year booking.
Dutchy says that once he’s finished designing and programming all the songs in the set, his operating style is very much about precise musical timing and rhythm. OA doesn’t play to any click or backing tracks, there’s no timecode so everything must be executed in real-time.
“I need to be in practise to get a perfect show, and I take my execution very seriously,” he commented. “You’ll often catch me at FOH standing on something and squinting at the drummer or waiting for him to drop his sticks at the start of a song or important section.”
Dutchy wanted to make a special mention to Sam Carroll who’s in charge of all things Infinity Mirrors, and Dane Boulton who’s covered him for the Hordern and Thebarton Shows while he attended to an imminent baby arrival!
Photos: The Sauce @the.sauce
