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i-Pix BB’s Weather the Festival Circuit
i-Pix’ new BB LED Wash Lights were again in action on the summer festival circuit helping to create some great effects, making some fabulous atmospheres and surviving all extremities of meteorology!
The latest festival to feature the BB – a totally new style LED blinder unit from i-Pix – was last weekend’s The Glade. Now in it’s fourth year and set in the beautiful Berkshire countryside near Aldermaston, the boutique ‘electronic music’ mix of Glade offers a laid back funky vibe with “a strong aversion to all things corporate/mainstream and a great love of everything alternative, underground and interesting”.
Lighting for the Glade (main) stage and the tented Vapour stage was supplied by west London based Colour Sound Experiment, who have serviced the Glade Festival’s main venue since the inaugural event in 2004.
Colour Sound’s Jasper Johns designed the Glade Stage rig based on a flexible, generic design, that could be used by all artists. The lighting was fitted to the roof shape of the Glade’s new semi-open main stage tent.
Johns placed six BB’s unit on the floor, two positioned stage left and stage right with the other two at the back, to give intense low level blasts and washes of light. Johns had previously used the BBs on the Glade Stage at Glastonbury, where he was suitably impressed, and keen to use them again at the Glade’s own event.
“They are really smooth and incredibly bright,” he comments. “Very impressive for an LED fixture.” He kept the programming simple and straightforward, and the BB’s along with the rest of the lighting rig, were run off an Avolites Pearl Expert.
Being a dance festival, the BB’s colour strobing effect was one of the most popularly used features – both by Johns, and Kester McClure who was also running the Glade Stage – and by the many visiting LDs and LJs who operated as their acts played over the weekend.
Getting down and dirty (literally!) on the Glade Stage were Digitalism, Hybrid, Squarepusher, Trentmoller Live, Paul Woolford, UNKLE and many, many more Schedules were disrupted by the storms, with some performers missing their slots because of the road closures, general transport chaos and flooding across much of the surrounding countryside.
“This summer’s weather has been a great test for the BB’s tough engineering and build,” says product designer Chris Ewington.
Colour Sound supplied another 4 BB’s in the Vapour Tent which was designed and run by Stuart “Woody” Wood and Toby Lovegrove using an Avo Diamond 4 console. They were again positioned on the floor, two units in front of the DJ platform for audience illumination and two upstage of the DJ platform. “They are brilliant,” enthused Lovegrove.
In Vapour, they also utilized 12 i-Pix Satellites to tone two trussing arches and a straight truss onstage. Johns adds: “We have had the Satellites for some time now, they are great – very compact and easy to handle – and equally as useful for corporate work as for music events.”
It was the first year that The Glade has experienced bad weather, suffering along with the rest of southern and other parts of England with some of the worst rainstorms and flooding ever. This very dramatic situation quickly reduced the Glade site into a mudbath, but it didn’t affect the vibe, the action or the party at all – in fact having the opposite effect, and enhancing the sense of general togetherness!
i-Pix BB’s have also been in action at many other high profile festivals this summer. This run started at the Isle of Wight where 10 were specified by LD Andy Hurst and used to warm the PA scrims and for highly effective audience illumination. This was followed by Glastonbury, Live Earth London, the Love Box London Weekender, and they will also be at Global Gathering.
30th July 2007
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