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!

Equipment will be provided by PRG, including Martin's LC series semi-transparent LED screens which will be James' responsibility. He will also be helping with the lighting rig and roll on should he have any spare time!

Keep checking back for more news. Follow James' updates here: Faithless Posts

Andy Hurst is the lighting designer, who has passed his operating duties to Neil Carson of Enhance Production. HSL will be providing the lighting equiment: 16x James Thomas Pixelline 1044, 8x Martin Atomic strobes with XL Video providing 8x Martin LC panels. Video will be sourced from a MacBook pro provided by Andy running Archaos, cued by a WholeHog 3 triggered using SMTPE streamed from the band. The lighting will be controlled by Neil using a Chamsys MagiQ Pro from front of house.

The kit will be mounted into 4x dollys, each 2m wide and 2m high to accommodate a 2m square LC screen, with 4x Pixellines mounted horizontally above each other behind the screen, spaced with 2x Atmoics. Dollys were chosen for ease of transport and erection, since Pendulum will not be appearing at the top act at all the events and wont be blessed with an overnight rig on most, a fast stage turnaround is a must.

James will be looking after the maintenance of both the video and lighting aspects of the rig, also supervising the 'roll-on' to stage at the beginning of the act. This involves arranging the lift of all 4x dollys onto Litedeck to increase height and visibility of the screen, and then connecting the dolly looms to the control equipment and testing before show start.

The band will be appearing at:

• 53 Degrees, Preston, England
• Pinkpop Festival, Holland
• Isle of Wight Festival, England
• Planet Festival, Czech Republic
• Download Festival, England
• Sonisphere Festival, Holland
• Wolverhampton Civic, England
• Glastonbury Festival, England
• Rock Werchter, Belgium
• Heineken Opener Festival, Poland
• Oxegen Festival, Ireland
• T in the Park, Scotland
• Somerset House, London, England
• Pohoda Festival, Slovakia
• Gurtenfestival, Switzerland
• Global Gathering, England
• Ibiza Rocks Hotel, Spain
• Sziget Festival, Hungary
• Frequency Festival, Austria
• V Festival, Chelmsford, England
• V Festival, Stafford, England