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Entec Gets Tooled Up
West London based Entec Sound and Light have tooled up to supply the cult US thrash metallers Tool with full lighting and sound production and crew for their current, extensive European tour, supporting their newly launched ‘10,000 Days’ album.
Entec’s ability to offer an integrated sound and lighting package helped them win the competitive bid for the tour – their first with the band – via tour manager Craig Duffy. The tour is being project managed for Entec by Noreen O’Riordan (lighting) and Dick Hayes (sound).
LD Breck Haggerty has worked with Tool since 1998 – initially as lighting crew chief before graduating to the design hot seat. Quiet and softly spoken – in complete antithesis to Tool - the main lighting consideration for this tour was designing something floor based and optimised for easy rigging and de-rigging. The concept is that this toured to festivals throughout the summer, enabling them to have as much of their show as possible with a minimum of fuss.
Onstage, there are four screens supported by five vertical Pre-Rig trussing towers on custom bases. Each tower features three High End Studio Colors and a Martin Professional MAC 700. On the downstage part of the floor are 4 x-Spots, MR16 batten strips along the amplifiers and six PixelPARs under a Plexiglas topped riser.
The downstage overhead truss features three VL3000 washes, while the upstage one has seven VL 3000 Washes, another four x-Spots and four antique ‘Scoop’ Mole Richardson Rifle Floodlights – a giant reflector containing huge 1000 Watt incandescent light bulbs. These units give a marvellous walk-in look for the audience as well as providing valuable work light on stage.
Haggerty runs the lights and an extensive video show through Entec’s newly purchased grandMA lighting console, along with two digital media servers and four Christie Digital 20k projectors. With lots of extreme dynamics in the set, and an expediently sized rig, Haggerty maximises each instrument. There is a lot of back lighting, moodiness and silhouetting, and the vibe veers from great sensitivity to rampaging anger, so he never finds himself short of visual ideas.
It is the first time he’s worked with Entec – but he hopes it won’t be the last! “They have been absolutely great,” he says. “The crew – Andy Mountain, Adam Copland and Leo Tierney – are excellent, and Noreen went out of her way to source the Scoops – which is always in indication of how much someone cares about their work and your creative needs.”
Front of house engineer Nobby Hopkinson’s character and wit are semi-legendary in the industry – matching the band for colour, loudness and expression. Bringing his own babysitter Erik Sanderson-Evans into the equation, they are joined by Entec’s Stefano Serpagli and Guy Gillen.
Entec is supplying a d&b C4 system which is proving totally up to being annihilatingly loud, hard, raw and as rock ‘n’ roll a they come - and clear with it. They are touring a total of 32 tops and 36 C4 bass cabinets, four C7s, two Max’s and 12 B2 subs – which has been enough to full all spaces so far to the required volume and power, matching the massive energy levels of the band.
A typical configuration would be 10 C4 tops and four bass a side, flown in left and right arrays, with nine C4 bass, six C4 tops, one C7 and five B2 subs a side on the deck.
Nobby mixes on a Midas XL4. He’d not even dream about using another console at this stage – and is running 44 mono and 4 stereo channels. The ‘toys’ rack contains a TC220 delay, used for modulation, and a selection of classics including a Roland SDE 3000, a Lexicon 480L and a Yamaha SPX900 . There’s also a TC Helicon digital vocal effect and a dbx 120 XP sub bass harmoniser.
Valve compressors include an Avalon 737 and a pair of Summit DCL 200 stereo channel devices. There’s 10 channels of dbx 160A compression, five Drawmer DS201 gates and the system drive/control is via 3 Lake Contours. There is also a new KT DN370 ‘engineer’s grabber E.Q.’ which Hopkinson likes because of the bigger more tactile knobs than on the last version! Amplification throughout is by d&b P1200s, with the subs driven by d&b A1s – one per unit.
Sanderson-Evans describes the sonics in creative terms as “how I imagine a fully-loaded B52 sounds during taking off – smoke, sparks, grunge, pure power - with maximum devastation to follow.”
He also comments that Entec have been an excellent service company to work with: “Highly efficient, friendly and knowledgeable,” he concludes.
28th June 2006
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