Basic Monkey has been asked to supply our new dual touring Catalyst system for Seal's Summer European tour starting tomorrow.

James will be accompanying the tour, looking after the system and interfacing with locally provided LED screens and projectors.

The tour starts in Estonia, working back across Europe down towards Portugal with a few days in Russia in between, finishing at the end of July in Poland.

Our new dual touring system is completely self contained, only requiring power and screen outputs to be connected. UPS, monitor, processing, multi-viewer, DAs and monitor are all within the rack to reduce truck space and enable swift load-ins.

Keep checking back for updates over the next 5 weeks!

For two days this week, James has been in Wakefield at Litestructures' "LS-Live" venue to set-up and help program the Catalyst systems that will be touring with McFly for the next 3 weeks.

XL Video are providing the systems along with the F11 back and riser screens and MiSTRIP stage.

James has been working closely with Dan from THC Design, who normally uses Mbox media server, to integrate the Catalyst content in with his lighting show.

Tomorrow is the first show in Sheffield and James will be around for any last minute changes and to make sure the first show goes well. Steve from XL Belgium will be looking after the systems for the rest of the tour.

Can you spot the cheeky Basic Monkey in the photos?

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The last of the festivals this summer for Basic Monkey and it turned out to be a tough one for all involved.

XL Video had a lot of LED at Creamfields. Even by Steve G's (Project Manager) own admission, he'd never seen or heard of so many LED techs on site!

James was principally based with Chris Isaacson in the Chibuku/Swedish House Mafia arena building, altering and repairing the Stealth screen there, although everyone pitched in site wide.

For the first night, the Stealth was rigged in a semicircle for Plastikman's performance, behind which he played making use of the transparent properties of the screen. After the show we had to wait until the other DJs finished at 4am, then for the ground support with all the lighting on to come down and go back up again. Come 8am we were finished, time to move on to main stage.

The overnight efforts were to re-rig the Stealth screen at the back of the stage for the Swedish House Mafia's set.

After an hour to rest in the tour bus or in hotel (for the lucky ones) staring at the walls, it was back to work for all to switch on and look after the screens for day 2.

On return to the Chibuku tent, the incoming production required a screen to cover the DJ decks table. So with heavy eyes, Duncan from BPM SFX rigged a makeshift truss rig and James, Chris and Ian built the remaining Stealth panels across the front using some cable ties, looked the part though!

The load-out went quicker than expected which was a saving grace, seeing the last XL presence leave site at 6:30am.

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Following on from the success in Edinburgh, The Doves asked Basic Monkey to provide a Catalyst media server for their show at The Green Man Festival in South Wales.

Arriving on site to find 'video world' in a pop-up tent by stage was a humorous start to the day although a little nerve racking when the rains hit hard! The character of the festival is impossible to fault, through heavy rain the guests were still out in force, from all walks of life and parts of the UK.

We were asked to feed the main stage's side screens with the show content, intermixed with camera shots using the festivals cameras and vision mixer. The show went without a hitch and had a great reaction from the crowd.

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James has just spent the night re-building a F-30 LED screen at the Goodwood Festival of Vintage following a power issue.

The phone rang yesterday afternoon in the hunt for an LED/power technician to get to Goodwood to rebuild the screen while they day crew got some rest. James arrived on site to find the cause of the problem, one of XL's touring distros, designed for use in the USA and in Europe had it's voltage selector in the wrong position when it should be locked! This meant that 400 volts went across just over half the screen (luckily the rest wasn't plugged in). A series of pops and bangs were heard and promptly a new screen was despatched from Belgium.

Come 7am, James and Gareth from XL had replaced 36 panels, some hung on motored trusses, the rest on vertical truss towers which had to be accessed using cherry picker (a very frustrating task).

A couple of hours rest were had at the Bognor Regis Best Western and then the 300 mile return journey.

Lesson learned about use of a multi-meter for those on site!

Tonight saw James in Edinburgh at very late notice to provide the Doves with our Catalyst media server for their show.

Mark Wynne-Edwards is the Doves lighting designer, using his own Jands Vista T2 console which works easily with Catalyst.

Once the content was uploaded to our server, it was simply a case of testing a few cues in Mark's pre programmed show and all was ready. The output was a Sanyo 10k projector onto a white drape behind the band. This allowed images to cast over the band members and kit.

Check out the photos!

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For the past few days, James has been at Global Gathering in Stratford-upon-Avon working for XL Video who are providing video kit and support across the site.

XL provided a variety of screens and projection across the site; F-30 for main stage, Bedrock and Random arenas, Martin LC for Global Arena and 4x Barco R22+ projectors for the Godskitchen tent.

James was tasked to rig and maintain the Martin LC 2140 panels in the Global Arena, which anyone who has worked with this screen before would know is no simple task. Being the older version meant that the whole rig had to be driven with DVI which meant short cables and lots of distribution. Thanks to the keen support of the local crew, the task was made much easier. The panels were positioned on a 'virtual screen' to give an abstract spaced image across the stage, lighting poles were placed between the panels to provide an effective mix of video and lighting.

Also within James' remit was the Godskitchen Arena which was to use the 'Boombox' design that the promoters are currently touring. This involved using 4x Barco R22+ projectors onto a scaffold box with white gauze across each divide, leaving a gap for the DJ in the middle. The graphics were provided by Exyzt, who first showed this principle as Etienne De Crecy's touring rig of 2 years ago. Their software was custom written for the task by the François Wunschel who used custom visuals and live video fed over microwave link by Pier Schneider.

Their show was something to behold, with live video sampling using a PlayStation controller to create incredibly well timed video loops to match the music, all matched with their infamous geometric patterns which create a real optical illusion.

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Big Glastonbury Show? Done.

The crew often mark their tours by the 'Big London Show' (Brixton etc..) and Glastonbury, I guess really as a right of passage for the band. Faithless however are no strangers to the Pyramid Stage but I'm pretty sure this show was the best to date.

For myself, there are few better feelings in life than standing infront or amongst 1000's of people 'going off' at a big moment. Last year, Pendulum's set on the 'Other Stage' blew me away for this very reason, the large crowd and the energy 0f the set just hit the right chords. This year, the Faithless crowd hit whole new levels...

I wouldn't like to guess at numbers, but there were people as far as the eye could see, and those at the back were giving it just as much passion and action as those down by the barrier. You'll notice below a number of attempts to capture the crowd on camera, but I'm afraid no photo could really do it justice.

Gladly I made it out to see a few friends on site, and check out another couple of stages. My favourite of which was seeing Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip at the Queens Head. There are certainly perks to the job.

There's a few big festivals to go, however Glastonbury will always hold a well deserved place among the best in the world.

James.

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So, after arriving late at night on our Boeing Business Jet (specially chartered for the band and crew), we headed over to site to check out the stage and technicals.

Seeing as there is only about an hour of darkness at this time of year, we could see the magnificence of the courtyard the show was in as soon as we arrived at 2am. Surrounded by dramatic state buildings, the stage looked very out of place. Even more bizarre was the crowd arrangement, with rows of seating in front of stage and the standing area not starting until behind the front of house tower. The event was for the Russian government's financial event in the city as a treat for the delegates, hence the seating.

Once the show kicked off the atmosphere wasn't what we'd come to expect from Faithless shows, with only a few people sat stage right in the VIP area and about 50 or so stage left in the guests area. The standing crowd in their thousands couldn't seem to get into the show until Maxi ran down the divide between the seating areas and brought the show to them! A very admirable move.

After this the crowd showed a little more energy, peaking for Insomnia and God is a DJ. They never really seemed to connect that much with the show though, how could you when the crowd starts 100ft from stage?

A very strange show in a beautiful place.

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Welcome to your first glimpse of the world's largest 'Etch-a-sketch'!

Tonight we were blessed with the large stage of the Wolverhampton Civic so all of the back screen went up and all of the riser video strips went out. A perfect chance to get a few photos for you.

From the beginning it was planned that 'Pilot' would be used as the media server for the tour, based on it's ability to do some funky pixel shifting. Due to time constraints and other influences, Intro were commissioned to produce the content for the show rather than use Pilot's built in rendering system. After a few teething problems at Brixton, I decided to try using Catalyst to run the show off my laptop. After a quick programming session at Doncaster, I had the show ready to go, all frame synced to the backing track and no issues at all. A real testament to the flexibility of the Catalyst system.

Check out the photos below to see the LC screen at the back and the MiTRIX panels on the risers.

James

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