The newest destination for UK clubbers is CODE, located at the aorta of Digbeth in central Birmingham. CODE is the first superclub and permanent venue owned and operated by legendary club promoters God’s Kitchen.

The stylish, contemporary interior design is by Matt Rawlinson of Raw Design, and the stunning effects lighting design is by Carl Dodds of Making Light Work (pictured with Avolites’ Azure console). All lighting fixtures for Dodds’ rig were supplied by Coe-tech to installers, Dublin-based Audio-Tek, with the Avolites Azure 2000 control console supplied directly by Avo to Audio-Tek.

The club’s main dance floor is overlooked by a balcony, with the VIP area in the ‘Gods’ at the top of the building, an atmospheric former warehouse, built in the 1930s. Dodds chose a variety of instruments for his high-impact rig, which was to be put in the hands of a specialist team of lighting operators.

The rig consists of Futurelight MH660s, MH640s and eight of the new MH 860s - the first in the UK. These formed the core of the rig and were joined by eight Futurelight SC980 scanners, 16 CC200 colour-changers, four TAS Versicolore spots and eight TAS 1500W Saetta strobes. Additionally, there are four TAS CF6 luminaires, a Coemar NAT TM 4000 and two JEM hazers.

Dodds chose an Avolites Azure 2000 controller plus a Stage Visualiser system for the installation as he needed a console with the power and speed to deal with an action-packed lighting rig and the plethora of fixtures. The Stage Visualiser is used in ‘live’ mode to enable the lighting team to create views from around the club. Dodds says: "The rig design and programming emanates, emits and revolves around the DJ ‘God’. With the LJ team located next to the DJ, it was vital to endow them with additional viewpoints so they could achieve this."

Audio-Tek also supplied CODE’s JBL sound system which was designed by Santiago Arribas. The six-way system features CVS118HS cabinets custom-built for the club. In the DJ booth, Technics turntables are complemented by a pair of Pioneer CDJ 500s and a Xone mixer from Allen & Heath. Control is provided by BSS Soundwebs run through a Jellyfish remote unit.


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