HSL, the UK's fastest growing lighting rental company completed a remarkable 'Manchester Double' last Friday the 15th December - with two of their current tours  - Beautiful South and Snow Patrol  - both playing Manchester arena sized shows the same night.

HSL has been busy investing in lots of new lighting technology this autumn, and both these tours feature various elements of this.

HSL's Simon Stuart comments "It's been the first time in at least 10 years that both Manchester's arena gigs have been in service and for us to be able to provide lighting in both Arenas on there opening nights was such a achievement ". Its been a long hard year for us and this was just the icing on the cake! What a fantastic end to a great Year.

In the 19,000 capacity Manchester Evening News Arena, Beautiful South wowed the crowds with a great show and an imaginative, highly crafted lighting design by Dave Byars.

Just down the road in the newly refurbished GMEX Centre, Snow Patrol rocked two stonking nights to sold out crowds. They were treated to the combined visual talents of LD Davy Sherwin, Catalyst programmer and operator Robin Haddow and live video director Blue Leach. The three worked closely together to produce a unique, highly stimulating visual panorama for Snow Patrol's fans.

The Beautiful South rig is based around Robe moving lights. Byars' design features sumptuous red and grey drapes, borders and legs and a classy, opulent theatrical feel. He's operating the lights on the Avolites Diamond 4 console, and HSL has supplied all the UK and European legs of the tour since it started back in May.

HSL has just purchased 6 new RADlite NG1 digital media servers, and Byars has one of these on the tour running a SoftLED LED backdrop.

For Snow Patrol, HSL invested in a large stock of Liftket Motors and Kinesys motion control. These are used for suspending three moving upstage trusses and five moving hi res video screens supplied by XL Video.

Sherwin's design utilises over 100 Robe moving lights including 33 of the new new high-powered Robe ColorSpot 2500s, plus Robe ColorSpot and Wash 1200ATs. HSL is also supplying 5Kw Syncrolite B52s and ColorWeb low resolution LED screen, also just acquired by HSL for the tour.

Sherwin operates the show using a WholeHog 3 console, and Haddow runs two Catalyst digital media servers from a WholeHog II.


Date of issue: December 2006