The packed-with-anticipation Liverpool Arena show was more than a ‘homecoming’ event, it was the end of a remarkable journey that’s taken the Wombats from pubs to arenas within the lifetime of their debut album - “A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation”, which kicked off back in October 2007.
The band met while they were students at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA) and there is also a strong LIPA connection amongst the crew as well - although they didn’t necessarily all know each other when students. Most of the key crew have been on Planet Wombat since the start of the band’s career, demonstrating a great loyalty and trust in those who have believed in them since the off .
Lighting designer Ali Pike has worked with them for 3 years, starting when they were still unsigned and playing Liverpool pubs after a first meeting downstairs at Liverpool’s Carling Academy. Back then, she “started to have fun with what was available” lighting wise, and has kept to many basic song interpretations in terms of colours and effects as the tours and production have steadily grown - always maintaining the ever important Wombat prerequisite of having a laugh!
Design wise, they are into retro 1980s pastiche and with that comes a big responsibility for bringing some seriously cheese-tastic disco looks and elements to the performance. It also gives Pike plenty of scope for eccentricity which she likes. At the Arena, Christmas lights and disco balls adorned the stage amidst the conventional lighting kit, all of which was supplied by locally-based ADLIB Lighting - who have supplied Pike and the Wombats from day one.
ADLIB’s John Hughes has looked after Pike and the Wombats while they have been hiring kit and comments, “Finishing the tour with an arena show has allowed us to work alongside Ali to produce an amazing grand finale to the first album”. He recognises what a great attraction having fun on the road is for all their techs clamouring to get work with Pike and the Band, and also that the band have great loyalty to those who’ve helped from the start. “We treat Ali like one of us and it’s always a pleasure to work with her,” he affirms.
Pike essentially retained all the major visual ideas she’s developed over the last 18 months and made them larger for Liverpool Arena. She’s had Bert onboard since April 2008, who’s “Given me plenty of grief, jumping offstage, taking roofs out and sometimes inflating the wrong direction, in true Wombat style asserting his individuality and proving he has a mind of his own!
Rigged to the centre of the back truss, Bert was a starting point for the trussing layout.
For this show she also wanted to use video panels to bring a 1970’s New York clubby dancefloor style to the stage, and suggested to the band that they used a Catalyst (digital media server) to create effects like the Wombats logo and other video looks on these - which they thought was brilliant.
Pike designed and created all the show’s Catalyst video content with ADLIB’s Andy Rowe, using stock library footage as the starting point, and this was operated by Rowe for the show using a Hog iPC console. Because of the short prep time for a high-pressure-high-profile one off - she sensibly kept the video elements straightforward.
The video panels were 10 Barco i-Lite tiles each measuring a metre square, supplied by XL Video to ADLIB Lighting.
For lighting, they installed three 48 ft wide trusses, with an additional mid stage truss constructed from 12 inch truss to hang 4 of the 10 video tiles - the other 6 were hung off the 3 lighting trusses.
The moving lights were 30 Martin Professional MAC 700 Profile and Wash luminaires spread across all 3 trusses and on the floor. Ten Atomic strobes blasted into action emphasising classic disco moments, and a selection of 2 and 4-way Moles also were on retinal burn out duty. On the back truss, the fixtures - MACs, blinders and Atomics - were hung on a selection of drop bars to maximise the different height dynamics, and introduce a gently asymmetry and zig-zag effect - a Wombat theme that’s been running since the start.
Pike added some Source Fours for key lighting and some PixelLines and PixelPARs for additional LED accents and band illumination, along with several strings of fairy/Xmas lights to dress the risers and a series of upright poles at the back for the roller disco dancers joining the show at the end of the set. Fairy lights are also an ongoing Wombats stage show feature, starting unsurprisingly as a bit of a joke framing the original Wombats road signs that they toured in the early days!
A spectacular upstage silver glitter curtain was also up-lit with PixelLine battens for an additional glitz factor.
Pike used an Avolites Diamond 4 Vision console to run the show - her desk of choice. She’s a big Avo fan and has toured Pearl Experts and 2004s on different legs of the tour throughout the year.
For the Arena, it was time to step up to Avo’s most powerful and versatile console. “It’s great to have everything laid out in front of me, instantly accessible and ready to go,” she comments. It is a cued show, but there are also plenty of improvisational moments, where Pike needs to be able to busk the desk - a quality for which Avo is known and loved. She visited Avo beforehand for 2 days, and working on WYSIWYG, programmed large portions of the show in advance, which helped enormously with the tight timeframe on the day. This was also useful for her to show the band how it would look.
The Wombat road signs have also been omnipresent since the start, an idea that originated whilst she was driving across America on another tour. They graduated to the current 1 metre square versions for a show at the Albert Hall earlier in 2008. These were also up-lit with PixelPARs.
Pike had no time to get nervous on the day of the Arena show! The get in started at 7am and she was onsite from 10am. Usually a very hands-on working LD, for this she held back a little bit to be fresh for the show. The main logistical issue on the day was getting enough dark time to fine tune the programming with a larger rig to be installed and 3 bands to sound check, making the 2 days pre-programming at Avo even more valuable.
ADLIB Lighting’s crew for the Arena show included Tim Spilman and Neil Holloway, the latter who’d also worked on the tour with Pike.
Pike was also instrumental in designing the look and feel of the show’s IMAG aesthetics the hardware for which was supplied by Absolute AV from Melbourn in Cambridgeshire. Absolute’s Jon Foster led a team of 7, who supplied two 16ft side screens fed by 2 rear projecting Sanyo XF47 machines.
Cameras were 3 Sony DSR400s, one at FOH and two in the pit, plus a Sony PD170 hand-held onstage, along with another PD170 locked off at the back of the stage and a static lipstick camera over the drum kit.
These were all fed into a Panasonic MX50 switcher, chosen specifically to produce the tacky 1980s transitions that Pike wanted - in keeping with the overall retro off-the-wall disco theme immortalised in the band’s epic “Backfire At The Disco” music video. A mixed camera feed was also sent to Rowe’s Catalyst for outputting to the Barco panels when desired.
Industry maverick Steve Sunderland has production managed the band for the last year, and his company Audiolease has also been the sound contractor. “They are an absolute pleasure to work with in every way and the nicest group of people I have toured with for a long time” enthuses Sunderland - who has seen a few bands and ‘personalities’ come and go in his day!
Sunderland specified the audio kit for the Arena show in consultation with FOH engineer Dave Samwell. They chose 12 VDOSC elements per side with 6 dV underhangs and further hangs of 8 dVs a side for bleacher fills, plus VDOSC subs. These were all powered by Labgruppen 6400 amps.
Lake DLPs were used for system processing, “Simply the best controller in the world” states Sunderland, who thinks the slopeless linear phase brick wall crossovers are particularly cool, and, like many, is gutted that they’ve been discontinued!
Samwell’s FOH desk of choice was the DigiDesign Profile. Like Ali Pike, he’s also been with the Wombats since they were unsigned, instantly spotting the potential for some great music as well as plenty of laughs!
He intimates that the Wombats don’t necessarily need a digital console as their mix is incredibly straightforward, he doesn’t use the Scenes or Snapshots and mixes very much on-the-fly …. However, particularly on the earlier sections of the tour, this console saved plenty of space at FOH, reducing the footprint to an expedient and manageable size when they were pushed for space.
He also likes the Profile very much and thinks it sounds great. The Liverpool show took the channel count to 24, all on one layer, and he utilised all the onboard effects and processing, just adding in a TC D2 delay for a couple of specific effects. He also prefers having the tap delay separate from the desk as it’s easier to keep an eye on it!
In creative terms, although it’s a pop mix, it veers towards the indie side of pop and has that raucous, punky, up-tempo underbelly that’s distinctively Wombats. “Trying to keep up with the kick drum can be a challenge,” he admits. They’re not outrageously loud onstage, but they do like to have a serious presence.
The band leave him to the mix, occasionally requesting certain effects like the never ending delay at the end of “Backfire” when he grabs the final line of vocals, loops it and leaves it playing while they exit stage. He recalls that they were a very tight sounding band already when he started with them, and that’s developed steadily along with their performance experience. On this final section of the tour they added a second bass amp to Todd Overland-Knudsen’s set up to coax some sub out of it as his classic Fender, driven hard, becomes very distorted.
He was extremely pleased with the results of the VDOSC at the Arena, “It’s a good, consistent system” he says, “Great top end and very smooth”.
Monitors were mixed by Katt Lambert using a Midas XL3 console with standard outboard and effects racks. The wedges were 8 L-Acoustics 115s plus 2 ARCS a side for side fills and a single 15 inch sub for air movement behind drummer Dan Haggis.
From the production angle, one of Sunderland’s chief concerns is managing the Wombats’ young and very enthusiastic audience, who take crowd surfing and disco bouncing to new dimensions of the genre and like to crush right tight up against the barriers. “Our absolute priority is safety,” he reiterates. “We make sure security are well briefed to be exceptionally vigilant, watching for potential flash points, and ensuring that there’s a constant supply of water and diligent surveillance”.
His other concern at the Arena was that the roller disco girls might get up to some velocity when speeding down the rear ramps onto the forestage area …… so his security brief also included a section on pit security being ready to catch them in the event! Despite all the exuberance and high energy of a fabulous night this all passed without incident!
The Wombats will be recording a new album in early 2009, and we look forward to seeing a lot more of them live in the near future.