Postcards From the Edge
Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Ken Micallef
LIGHTS UP, UNDERWORLD DOWN
Lighting engineer Haydn Cruickshank's company, Coloursound Experiment, was born as an outgrowth of his Underworld work, which he has enjoyed for 14 years. Like Smith and Newsham, Cruickshank runs everything in real time, no automation, no audio syncing. Cruickshank uses a Flying Pig Whole Hog 3 board employing 20 faders and “many buttons.” The 60-plus lights Cruickshank used at Central Park are mostly Robe 700s, joined by Molefay, ACL and Par Can strobes.
“Nothing is timecoded or anything like that,” Cruickshank says. “I guess I am old-school. One fader will control a group of similar lights or a sequence of similar lights. In a big festival where the stage is far away, I have to be fairly crude in the effects I use. For the new songs, I generally don't hear them until they play them live. The first few times they play a new song, I stumble my way through it; then after a while, I get a vibe on what I want to do with it. There is no choreographed plan — it just evolves into something, and once I've found a format, it tends to stay that way forever.”
In addition to the massive white pills that popped up for a couple songs at Central Park, Karl Hyde's gold lamé coat caught the lights and the audience's attention. “Karl is very aware of the lighting, and he tries to complement that in his clothing and actions,” Cruickshank says. “One thing we use that is unique is a follow-spot, someone in the pit with a handheld Par Can with different gels. I brief whoever is operating it to up-light and follow Karl around and change colors at will. When he gets really into it — running and changing gels — that is fun.”
Midway through the SummerStage concert, Underworld's tubular fixation appeared: multiple 20-foot inflatables that dwarfed the band and perplexed the audience. “We use twelve 20-by-2-inch tubes,” Cruickshank explains. “Each one has an internal fan so they inflate and two internal LED fixtures [iPix Satellites] which light up the tubes. The tubes are white but made of a thin material, so when lit from within, the light glows through the material. It was the band's idea to create the tubes; we just added the lighting fixtures. We assumed they would be stood upright around the stage like columns, but once Underworld had them made, they decided to throw them around at random. It gets the crew involved. It is not what people expect. They usually come out in the same song, then stick around for a couple tracks. They light really well from within. The band wants to be engulfed by them completely.”
As for the potential of lighting breakdowns and how to handle them, Cruickshank is matter of fact: He doesn't sweat the small stuff. “When stuff goes wrong, we just deal,” he says. “If we turn up and only two lights work, that will be the show. It wouldn't be a problem. When we tour in the UK, we carry the same rig every day; in the states, we pick up a different rig in each town. Nothing is programmed, and there is no setlist. You have to go with the flow of the show.”
TRIPPING THE SIGHT FANTASTIC
A veteran of tours with Gorillaz, Paul Oakenfold and various IMAC festivals, Toby Vogel operates the insane visuals that are projected behind Underworld on a massive screen. The thousands of images are a combination of Rick Smith's photos and the work of their long-term art collective/organization, Tomato. Again, there is no automation or music syncing, but rather a live mix, night after night. Using an 8-channel Panasonic MX70 and 4-channel Edirol V-4 mixer, Vogel uses the two to layer multiple images on the screen. Two 80 GB Doremi Labs hard drives store the images, and visuals also run off an Apple MacBook Pro using Apple's Final Cut Pro to enable recall and create loops.
“I use low-res infrared night vision cameras for the grainy images that we like,” he explains, “and pencil-size Sony minicams that go around the equipment and a handheld remote for audience shots that also pan around the band. We also have a Toshiba pencil camera on a mic stand above the mixing console, and I have cameras left and right of that, which can be programmed before the show as well as operated live.”
Why this obsession with the manual control that seems to infest every aspect of Underworld's live performance? With improvisation seeming to be Underworld's raison d'être — from the stage and the lights to the audience — the band's music breathes as a live organism rather than a stagnant reproduction.
“Every show is different.” Vogel says, “It's not like a cue-to-cue with MIDI controls that run through the track. This is a lot more live because of how Underworld works. They might decide to jam in between the tracks, or they might spend 10 minutes going off before the next track begins. Every night is different; you never get the same show twice. Certain visuals run with certain tracks, but if I feel the vibe, I can change it.”
HAPPINESS IS?
With their relatively small and familiar crew, a happy Underworld family would seem to ensure successful shows. But as is often the case, one person's success is another person's ultimate meltdown.
“Coming offstage really happy doesn't necessarily mean the best show,” Rick Smith implies. “It just means you're happy. Karl might come offstage happy and pleased with his performance. We've rocked the house. But how relevant is that? For the people in the audience, I don't know how to measure success. It is an unpredictable thing to do with time and place.”
“During the show, Rick might have been fighting the machines the whole way through, lashing it together while the shit was falling to bits and the crowd didn't know,” Hyde says. “I have walked offstage 'cause I was crap and it was all shit, and people still loved it. So I know nothing.”
“The fight is about overcoming adversity,” Smith adds. “One of our most deeply moving concerts was at Giants Stadium, which on paper should have been a disaster. The show was moved at the last minute, it was raining, we played to 10,000 people, which is small for that venue. [But] the backstage crews pulled together, lost all ego and did their best. It was soaking wet. But that was one of the most deeply moving gigs we ever played; it was about the spirit of that night. Maybe we weren't rocking that great, but we connected. It was not a big grand gesture, but something happened that night.”
UNDERWORLD LIVE
Computers, DAW/recording software, consoles
(2) Apple iMac G5s running Logic Pro 7 and Ableton Live 6, (3) Apple PowerBook G4s running Logic Pro 7 and Ableton Live 6: “The main G5 iMac sends clock to all the other Macs so everything is locked up, which is great for jamming,” Smith says.
Liebert UPS battery backup
Midas Heritage 1000 Console
MOTU 896HD FireWire Audio Interface
Native Instruments Kore
Mics, mic preamps, effects
Electro-Voice N/D757b mic
Focusrite Liquid4Pre
(2) Korg DL8000 delays
Prosoniq Orange Vocoder
Roland VP-330 Vocoder
Sennheiser (2) e 935 mics with EM 550 G2 receiver, SKM 500 G2 radio mic
Sony DPS-V77 reverb, HR-MP5 multi-effects processor
Synths, modules, software, instruments
Apple Logic Audio ES2 and EFM plug-ins
Arturia ARP 2600V soft synth
Gibson Les Paul guitar
Clavia Nord Lead 2 synth
Korg 03R/W rackmount synth
M-Audio GForce impOSCar soft synth
Quasimidi Technox rack synth
Rob Papen Blue soft synth
Spectrasonics Stylus RMX, Trilogy and Atmosphere virtual instruments
Drum machine, turntable, DJ mixer
Funktion-One DJ Mixer
(3) Pioneer CDJ-1000 CD turntable
Roland TR-909 drum machine
Monitors
(2) Funktion-One Stage Monitors and Resolution 2 self-powered speakers, (2) F-218 Infrabass subs
Sennheiser EW 300 IEM G2 radio monitor system
XTA DP226 Speaker Management System
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
