ADLIB Lighting supplied equipment and crew to the Wombats first full UK production tour which has just finished.
Lighting Designer Ali Pike has worked for the Liverpool indie rockers since they were unsigned three years ago, and says, "ADLIB have always looked after us, whether it's been a few specials for one offs and the previous tour, right up to the full rig and crew for this one - they are absolutely brilliant".
Ali's design starting point for the tour was based on some elements that have been used in their live visuals for some time. A lot of the initial concept ideas also came from the "Backfire at the Disco" promo video, which features a series of cheese-tastic DJ and disco lighting effects.
Luckily Ali persuaded the band that they could reproduce some of these on tour using more robust and practical kit like PixelLines!
The back truss was rigged with 4 bars of 6 PARs, 3 Martin Professional MAC 700 Spots, and six 2-lite blinders which were zig-zagged along the front of it.
The front truss featured 6 Source Fours and 4 High End Systems Studio Beams.
Upstage on the floor were 5 8ft vertical truss towers on special bases, with a MAC 700 Spot on top of the four outer ones. A pink gelled lightbox with the Wombats logo, decked out with christmas tree lights - which has been with them since day one - topping the central tower.
Ten JTE PixelLines were attached to the towers at jaunty angles with frost filters over the top to create a punchy discoey zig zag streak right across stage. Another 5 sets of 2-lite blinders were attached to the towers also in zig zag format, plus 5 Atomic strobes.
Fixed to the front of each tower was a diamond shaped Wombat road sign bordered with XMas tree lights, each individually up-lit with a JTE Micro E fixture.
Eight 70s style Disco Ball effects were side hung on the upright towers. These were sourced by the band from EBay and revamped and made tourable by ADLIB!
For the larger shows, 6 additional Wombat signs were hung upstage of the truss towers, each lit with a PixelPAR rigged to the back of the towers.
Again, where space allowed, a 12ft inflatable wombat was installed on the front truss via a custom bracket fabricated by ADLIB. The wombat was kabuki dropped then inflated during the pre-encore blackout.
Ali has worked with ADLIB on other projects as well as The Wombats, and they are her "Company of choice" wherever possible. She was joined on the tour by ADLIB crew Andy Rowe and Neil Holloway who were “Brilliant”.
Ali ran the show from an Avolites Pearl Expert console.
The tour culminated in shows at the Royal Albert Hall and Manchester Apollo.
Ends.
Date of issue : 13th June 2008.
For more press info. on ADLIB Lighting, please contact Louise Stickland on +44 (0)1865 202679 or +44 (0)7831 329888 , or Email ‘louise@loosplat.com’, Contact ADLIB direct on +44 (0)151 486 2214 or check www.adlibaudio.co.uk.