UK - Since their formation in 2017, Lights Control Rigging (LCR) has supplied kit for many high-profile tours and artists ranging from Ed Sheeran and Dizzee Rascal to rising stars such as Wolf Alice and Sundara Karma.
“At the moment we seem to be sending out equipment for a different tour every week,” says LCR director, Mike Oates. “The key is being able to work with the artists, their lighting designers and make sure we have the right, high quality equipment available at the right time. We work closely with A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET), who supply much of the eq

USA - Arizona’s famed Valley of the Sun is located in a desert, but from 11-15 April, this hot, dry landscape was shaking with thunder, not the meteorological kind, but the rolling four-stroke variety, as over 70,000 motorcyclists from every corner of North America, descended on the area for the 22nd annual Arizona Bike Week.
At the end of each day, after all the charity rides and swap meets were over, most bikers said goodnight (temporarily) to their Hogs, Blackbirds and Hurricanes and headed off to the event’s fairground concert venue to see multi-platinum headliners like ZZ

UK - Established 20 years ago and set in the heart of rural Essex, the Magic Mushroom restaurant offers contemporary fine dining in relaxed modern surroundings. A recent extension and upgrade has added high quality audio, thanks to Yamaha loudspeakers and amplifiers.
With a growing number of customers, for 2018 Magic Mushroom’s owner decided that an extension to the restaurant was needed, along with a new sound system. The restaurant prides itself on sourcing its products locally and has continued this ethos with the new audio system, approaching technical production company Spo

France - French band Shaka Ponk is touring through 2018 with a rig that includes flexible lighting pods full of Elation Rayzor 360Z LED fixtures, as well as Elation’s new narrow-beam DARTZ 360 LED moving head.
Lighting design is by Alexandre Bucher of the 4eleven company, who has worked with Shaka Ponk for seven years as a lighting and video programmer and has toured with the band several times. The current MonkAdelic tour is his first as lighting designer. The LD, who also serves as lighting director on the tour, works with a set rich in scenery and detail with accompany

Sweden - Philips Lighting played a central role in the lighting for Melodifestivalen 2018, the popular television series in which Sweden's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest is selected annually.
The VL6000 Beam, from the Philips Entertainment Lighting portfolio, was chosen by award-winning lighting designer Fredrik Jönsson, one of Europe's leading experts in lighting entertainment events for television. Jönsson has been responsible for lighting Melodifestivalen since 2002, and has also lit the Eurovision finals on two occasions, in 2013 and 2016.
For Me

USA - Tools from Waves Audio were employed by sound engineers for a variety of performers in diverse set-ups and consoles throughout Coachella 2018 – from Avid Venue S6L (Kygo) and Avid Venue Profile (The Weeknd), to DiGiCo SD10’s (Vince Staples), to SSL Live (Portugal. The Man) and Waves’ own eMotion LV1 Live Mixer (MØ). Prominent FOH engineers provided a peek under the hood of their productions, relaying which tools help them create a tight, spectacular-sounding show under demanding festival conditions.
Vince Staples’ FOH engineer Robbie Barr has been touring with DiGi

USA - Excitement for ABC-TV’s Academy Awards show built well before the telecast began with the arrival of celebrities captured by the Oscars Opening Ceremony: Live from the Red Carpet. The pre-show, held on famed Hollywood Boulevard outside the Dolby Theatre, featured for the first time Claypaky K-EYE K20 HCR LED wash lights selected by lighting designer Madigan Stehly.
Stehly has worked on the Red Carpet show for the last five years. This year marked his first in the lighting designer’s seat. He describes his brief for the live broadcast as “daylight reinforcement

UK - New Robe MegaPointes and LEDBeam 150s, purchased by SJ from Birmingham UK based rental and technical specialist DMX Productions, were used to spectacular effect in lighting the 2018 Voice in a Million (VIAM) extravaganza which was staged at London’s SSE Wembley Arena. VIAM amasses some of the largest children’s choirs in the world.
The Voice in a Million organisation was founded by Robert and Jo Garofalo in 2006, to raise awareness of the millions of children worldwide who are orphaned, abandoned or separated from their birth parents. In 2009 the VIAM shows began

UK - Students from the University of South Wales Lighting and Technology department, who were given the opportunity to operate the lights for a music video shoot by The Haus Band at The Wales Millennium Centre last month.
The students got to use a variety of consoles, including a ChamSys PC Wing to run a David Howard- and Dominic Boston-designed rig that featured over 50 moving lights, including Chauvet Professional Maverick and Rogue fixtures. Aside from getting the chance to operate this impressive gear, the students garnered valuable insights into the lighting design process. <

Malaysia - Goldenduck International recently outfitted the newly-opened MBO The Starling Mall with end-to-end cinema surround audio systems by Harman Professional Solutions.
Founded in 2005, MBO Cinemas operates 27 complexes across Malaysia, making it the third-largest chain of movie theatres in the nation. The new state-of-the-art facility at The Starling Mall in the Kuala Lumpur suburb of Petaling Jaya offers a wide range of movie-going experiences, with revolutionary theatre formats such as MBO Big Screen, MBO Premier, MBO MX4D and MBO Kecil.
In order to ensure pristine s

USA - Steven Wilson is out on tour with a lighting package provided by Bandit Lites, bringing his ever-evolving sound to audiences around North America. The English musician and singer-songwriter released his fifth studio album To the Bone in the fall of last year, and while lighting director Tellson James is apt to note that Steven’s sound dictates the lighting, he also works to make sure the mood of the lighting matches the songs.
Bandit Lites is supplying Martin MAC Viper Profiles, GLP JDC1 Strobes, Clay Paky B-EYE K20, a Road Hog for control along with Chauvet VIP X6

USA - With total album sales topping 12m and more than 35m singles sold, Imagine Dragons continue to soar – and the Las Vegas band’s epic live gigs no doubt play a significant part in its swift ascension into ‘arena filler’ status. Last year witnessed the four-piece thunder its way through North America, wowing fans on the first leg of its Evolve World Tour which started in Phoenix, Arizona and is scheduled to conclude in Kiev later this year.
This opening stage of the global outing, in support of the band’s third studio album Evolve, comprised 31 North Ame

Poland - The new Karova Club in Warsaw has opened, with an advanced technology infrastructure. As a central component of the AV fit-out, Phono Media, Martin Audio’s recently-appointed Polish distributor, supplied system integrator, LFX, with a CDD (Coaxial Differential Dispersion) and BlacklineX solution to fulfil the owners’ request for the Martin Audio brand cachet.
Explains Phono Media director Jacek Stanislawski: “This is a brand new club and the owner approached them for a quotation, believing that Martin Audio would be a perfect solution for the club sound. The owner,

UK - Really Creative Media, digital and live production company, created live performance visuals for Friendly Fires’ one-off comeback gig at O2 Brixton Academy, 5 April.
Machine Management, brought in Really Creative Media’s video expertise to ensure Friendly Fires’ first UK gig in five years delivered maximum visual impact.
“Having worked with Clean Bandit since 2016, who are also with Machine Management, we knew the artist team at Machine,” commented Nick Dew from Really Creative Media.
Over the course of one month, creative director Jack James brought the

UK - Sound Space Vision (SSV) acousticians and theatre planners worked as consultants with architects, MUMA, to provide an innovative and sustainable community space for Storey’s Field Centre at Eddington, on the University of Cambridge’s North West Cambridge development.
Storey’s Field Centre is the dynamic hub of the community of Eddington, a new neighbourhood under construction as part of the North West Cambridge development. The Centre is a civic building in the heart of the new development and encompasses meeting rooms and a large multi-purpose hall for exercise classes

France - Dushow, one of France’s leading technical production companies, has invested in 20 of Robe’s RoboSpot remote follow spotting systems.
Dushow’s commercial director Christian Lorenzi commented, “We see this as a big innovation in the follow spotting world. It’s very flexible and gives everyone involved in staging all types of shows many more options.”
The RoboSpot system comprises a BaseStation and a MotionCamera that communicate via DMX with no latency and enable several of Robe’s most popular moving lights – including, currently, the BMFL Spot, BMFL

UK - The hit musical, Hamilton opened at the end of December to sell out audiences at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London. Prior to its opening, the venue underwent a complete facelift to prepare for the show, with everything from the decor, the seats and the uniforms of the staff tying in with Hamilton. As part of the refurbishment, Unusual Rigging was brought on board to rejuvenate the theatre's 'tired' flying system as well as to provide rigging services for the show itself.
Jeremy Featherstone of Unusual explained: "The flying system at the Victoria Palace Thea

UK - Part of this year’s Barbican OpenFest saw a major new Culture Mile light and sound installation take place in the Beech Street tunnel, opposite Barbican Underground. Culture Mile presented Tunnel Visions: Array which transformed the tunnel into an audio-visual performance space combining cutting-edge projection and sound technology with the Barbican’s distinctive brutalist architecture.
Created by Tony Award-winning artists 59 Productions led by director Richard Slaney, co-produced with the Barbican, and with music by composer/conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, Tony and

UK - It is 35 years since Dreamgirls first hit Broadway. It was a sensational success then and the latest production at London’s Savoy Theatre is equally so.
Sound designer, Richard Brooker, wanted an analogue sound to the audio, in keeping with the show’s 1960s/70s setting, but also wanted to benefit from today’s digital technology. He specified a DiGiCo SD7T to handle Front of House mix duties, which has the warmth of sound he was looking for with all the advantages of the digital domain and the theatre-specific functions of DiGiCo’s ‘T’ software.
“No

USA - Allen & Heath dLive Digital Mixing Systems were in use on multiple Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival stages in support of a diverse line-up of musical acts and production needs.
Launched in 1999, Coachella has grown into a premier music and arts festival, grossing over $114m and drawing over 250,000 attendees annually. Coachella 2018 saw a large number of dLive artists on the line-up, including BØRNS, Hayley Kiyoko, Nile Rodgers & Chic, Nothing But Thieves, PVRIS and The Neighbourhood.
Praised for its intuitive workflow and tiny footprint, the dLive C1

Europe - British Electronic Dance Music (EDM) pioneers, Orbital, reunited last year to the delight of music fans world-wide after five years apart following separate projects. Brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll are currently touring their reunion show across Europe.
Lit and stage designed by the band's long-term lighting designer Jonny Gaskell, the show features an array of lighting effects from the Claypaky A.leda B-EYE K20 and Claypaky Stormy CC.
Known and loved for their moments of on-the-spot improvisation during live shows, Orbital can be a challenging act to light for eve

USA - Veteran lighting designer Kelly Easterling of Quantum Creative Studios recently deployed Martin by Harman MAC Encore Performance fixtures to create an intricate lighting design for The Secret Silk a Broadway-style musical which debuted on the Princess Cruises ship Royal Princess in February.
The Secret Silk was brought to life by a talented team of industry veterans, including Director John Tartaglia, executive producer Stephen Schwartz (creator of Wicked, Pippin and Godspell) and supervising producer Jayson Raitt from Quantum Creative Stud

USA - Launched in February 2018, Brilliant! is the latest addition to the popular Neon Museum Las Vegas, featuring an augmented-reality A/V system designed, installed, and programmed by Earth Water Sky of Las Vegas.
Combining art, history, and technology, the innovative Brilliant! neon experience, featuring 40 historic neon signs from the museum’s collection, is highlighted by Earth Water Sky’s 360-degree laser video projection system, a 24-channel 3D audio system with multitrack 3D audio soundtrack, and outdoor lighting system with automated show control. DMX signal di

USA - Silverdale Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, recently acquired an Allen & Heath dLive Digital Mixing System for its church campus in Ooltewah. A second dLive, in the church’s Creekside campus, will be installed at FOH soon. And, the church is in the planning stages for a third dLive to be installed in its main Bonny Oaks campus.
Matt Johnson, Silverdale’s technical director and Mark Randolph, the church’s media minister, considered several digital mixers but chose the dLive after an on-site demo at Bonny Oaks. “The more we listened to it and played with i

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