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HSL Productions has supplied full lighting rigs for both performance areas at the ABC, Glasgow's high profile and newest live music venue.
ABC, situated right downtown in a charismatic building on the City's famous Sauchiehall Street, is owned by Scottish promoters Regular Music and PCL, and the Workers Beer Company. It features a 1250 capacity main room and a 350 capacity second room plus VIP bar, and plugs the gap for a medium sized, highly specified live venue in central Glasgow.
Venue general manager Malcolm (Malky) Blair, a well known figure on the Scottish and UK music and touring scenes says, "We wanted a really excellent production facilities to encourage bands and performers to play without needing to bring in their own rigs".
As it's a multi purpose venue as well as a live music space, ABC will feature several regular club nights, so versatile lighting was also top of the agenda. The brief also included to make the it as accessible and efficient as possible as a working environment for visiting performers and their crews.
Steven Abbis (Stereophonics, Embrace, Misteeq, Sugababes, et al.) was asked onboard as lighting designer.
When it came to casting the net for a suitable supply company, Abbis looked at the options. Not only did HSL came in at the most competitive price, "Their enthusiasm and interest in the project was really impressive" says Abbis. "They put a huge amount of effort into the pitch, and are a really pleasant organisation to deal with who put service first".
Abbis worked closely with HSL project manager Rupert Reynolds.
The Main Room
Abbis wanted to include industry standard products with which incoming LDs would be familiar, and so chose Martin MAC moving lights, James Thomas Pixel range wash fixtures, Robe ColorMix 250 ATs and an Avolites Pearl console for control. "Everyone knows these brands. They're highly reliable and ideal for making the venue as functional as possible" he says.
The moving lights are MAC 500s. There's 28 altogether, 10 rigged over the stage on trussing, and 18 on a 10m by 10m box truss over the dancefloor.
LED'ing the way
In a departure from traditional lighting philosophy, Abbis decided to use PixelPAR 90 LED PAR lightsources for all the wash lighting. He did this for several reasons – low heat output plus energy and cost efficiency being the main ones. There’s 18 on the back truss and 4 on the front. "No more wastage with gels and bulb changing" he adds.
There's also 2 Atomic strobes over the stage, four bars of ACLs and 6 Source Four profiles, eight 4-lite blinders and six conventional PAR 64 floor cans.
Dance The Night Away
The dancefloor wash lighting is provided by the 16 Robe ColorMix's which also do some architectural lighting – the high vaulted ceilinged room features lots of the original steel structural framework. The room was once completely circular when it opened as Glasgow’s first ever ice rink in 1895.
The ColorMix is very flexible, offering full CMY colour changing facilities, remote 7 – 26 degree zoom, continuously rotating colour wheel with 4 colours, 3200ºK, 5600ºK, UV and frost filters plus open. It also has a beam shaper, adjustable between 0 and 180 degrees .. and that’s why it was chosen.
"The rig's been designed for the convenience of incoming artists" confirms Abbis
Mirror Ball
The most spectacular element of the dancefloor visuals is a humungous 2 metre mirror ball, flown in the gap in the middle of the box truss. It's arguably the largest rotating mirror ball in the UK. "I simply asked HSL what the largest size available was" says Abbis. It weighs 250 Kg, so HSL commissioned a special rotator to be engineered to spin it serenely, and several walls had to be removed to get it into the building.
A Pearl for Control
"It was an obvious choice" states Abbis "It's the industry standard console for small to medium lighting rigs, it's easy to use for those less familiar with it, it's one of the most ultimately buskable boards on the market and it's extremely reliable". Apart from that, he adds, the service from Avolites is also excellent.
Dimming is LightProcessor Paradim 36-way touring racks, and HSL also supplied a hot socket distro for the moving lights plus 3 Avolites DMX buffer boxes
Richard Wilson is currently the in-house tech. He’s also an experienced LD and operator and a familiar face on the lively Glasgow music scene
Second Room
This features a trendy bar area juxtaposed with a small black box performance space. Here Abbis specified 18 conventional PAR cans, 8 High End Trackspots and a simple Zero 88 desk. The Trackspots are switched to their internal sound to light triggers, so this area can easily be run without an operator.
The main challenge for the HSL's lighting installation team was fitting in with the contract builders, "The actual installation was simple, straightforward and completed very efficiently" says Rupert Reynolds, "It was a great pleasure to be working with an LD of Steve’s stature".
The Logic Systems audio system was supplied by locally based The Warehouse. The architects/interior designer was Michael Laird Associates of Edinburgh, who worked closely with the Regular Music team’s associates including David McBride and Malky Blair.
About ABC Glasgow
The ABC has now been serving the City of Glasgow as an Entertainment space for 3 centuries.
Designed be renowned Glaswegian architect Charles McNair, it opened in 1985, and after 10 years as Glasgow’s first "Real Ice Palace", it became home to Arthur Hengler's Circus & Menagerie. Residents included polar bears, elephants, horses and a myriad of other four legged performers.
In the 1920's it was converted to a cinema (Sauchiehall Street was once the epicentre of movie-mad Glasgow), and opened in 1920 as the ABC - Glasgow's first talkie picture house - accommodating 2,350 people. It remained a cinema until its closure in 1999, by which time the building had been radically altered internally and broken up into multiplex screens. It was bought by a developer in the early years of the 21st century, and divided into units – of which the new owners acquired the largest two.
Confirmed acts for the opening month include Ocean Colour Scene, Roddy Frame, The Proclaimers, the Average White Band and many more, The fill club programme will be announced in September, although the emphasis at the ABC will be on live music.
Photos:
ABC Technical Manager Richard Wilson, Lighting Designer Steven Abbis, HSL’s Rupert Reynolds and ABC General Manager Malcolm "Malky" Blair.
Lighting designer Steven Abbis with the Avolites Pearl consol
Date of issue : 22nd June 2005
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