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George Gorton chooses Robe for Peach Pit tour

Canadian indie rockers Peach Pit completed the North American section of their “Long Hair, Long Life” tour with a new lighting design from George Gorton from Vancouver-based creative design studio Loud Entertainment Design Group.

The visual concept relied heavily on lighting for impact - there were no video elements on this leg of the tour campaign - and included some key Robe products, including Forte moving lights and HolyPatt scenic luminaires, supplied by rental company Promosa, also from Vancouver.

Gorton has been working with the band for four years as their LD. For the “Long Hair, Long Life” tour, he imagined a completely new design. With a black backdrop upstage and no video, it was a perfect space for lighting to play important literal and scenic roles in the show. The bent milk crate image from the album cover artwork inspired him to think of linear lines contrasting with the spherical HolyPatts and riffing on the contrast between the two shapes.

Gorton says he wanted HolyPatts “for their interesting appearance and the distinctive look they bring to the stage”, and this became a starting point from which the lighting design evolved into an upstage row of thirteen wide by two high HolyPatts rigged on ladder trusses, with the fixtures alternated in height and positioned just in front of the black (back-cloth).

Based on Robe’s Patt2013, the larger HolyPatt has a 4W LED Vintage Soft Coil filament lamp with a colour temperature of 1,800 K to illuminate the transparent gold-brown parabolic reflector which produces an atmospheric glow. “I love the texturing and richness of incandescent lighting, and while these are LED fixtures, their dimming response, retro styling and brushed aluminium casing add the impression of a softer tungsten warmth to the picture”, Gorton explains.

Six of the ten Fortes were positioned along the floor at the back, with the other four - two a side - deployed left and right for low level cross light. “I needed power and lumens from these angles, especially when in saturated colours, and Fortes were perfect”, states Gorton. “They were a huge part of the lightshow.” He says he had used HolyPatts only once before on a tour with Ocie Elliott, which was also a bit of a test run to see how they would work onstage and how they would fare with touring - being pleasantly surprised in both contexts.

Challenges for the Peach Pit tour included the variety of venues being played and the consequent levels of light pollution. A memorable lighting moment of the set was during the song “Peach Pit”, when Gorton used all the HolyPatts glowing at around 20% and a single Forte, a simple framing of the action that was highly visually effective.

Working with Gorton on programming for the tour was assistant designer and associate Averil Bott who also directed some of the dates when Gorton had to jump off to fulfil other commitments. Looking after the “roll-on-roll-off” rig on the road was lighting crew chief Andrew Balzer from Promosa.

Gorton adds that Robe’s Forte/iForte fixtures will continue to be used and specified for all Loud Entertainment Design Group projects, including upcoming ones with all-girl rockers The Beaches and rapper Shubh.

(Photos: Kyle Dean)

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