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Avolites D7 installed at Heaven London

Heaven, one of London’s most iconic gay nightclubs, has recently installed a new Avolites D7 console in its main room, delivered via technical production and installation specialist Subfrantic, to provide flexible lighting and pixel control for the main room, a high-energy dance environment open seven nights a week.

Located under the Charing Cross railway arches on Villiers Street at the core of London’s West End, Heaven has been a safe space and entertainment hub for London’s LGBTQ+ community since its opening in 1979. It occupies three-and-a-half arched tunnels, with a total capacity of 1,725, and is known for a musical mix of electro pop, techno and dance, often with live bands and drag acts for additional flair.

The console upgrade project was led by the venue’s head of lighting, Shane Finucane, and regular programmer/operator Dan Sanders, who were looking to upgrade the previous Avolites Sapphire Touch console that had been installed around ten years ago. The old console needed replacing with faster and more contemporary technology, and this coincided with Avolites revealing its portable “next gen” D7 range, complete with all the futureproofing and functionality they sought.

Sanders has been an Avolites user for three decades, so is already very familiar with Avo’s Titan software architecture, and the two smaller rooms at Heaven also run on a Titan T1 setup. The main room demanded a potent console for programming the often complex looks and sequences needed to enhance the dance music experience, and a platform that worked for guest LDs.

Running lights at the club is a completely hands-on experience for Sanders who mostly freestyles, and while he doesn’t need a massive amount of programming macros, he does utilise every last flash button to craft this syncopated style of operation. He likes to play his console like a classic keyboard. “I like a certain level of tactility and granularity on these, so you know exactly what to expect when you’re playing arpeggios - exactly how much muscle power to apply, etc.”, he enthuses.

He finds that this fluid and kinetic workflow is vital, especially for lighting trance and heavier dance genres, where multiple lighting effects can be applied simultaneously to offer the best visual effects down on the dancefloor. “Everything is in these faders, including a degree of separation so the lighting rig effectively becomes like an orchestra of performers and instruments”, he says.

Feeling the atmosphere as the night progresses is also vital, Sanders notes, as this can shift quite dramatically depending on groups that are coming and going from the dancefloor, and all lighting operators need to be tuned in to this. He says he appreciates the D7’s playback touch screens and the Active Playback Window, usually having twenty or thirty open on the centre screen when running a show, plus running virtual playbacks for haze, video wall intensity and the group master. He uses the ten macro buttons along the bottom for his strobe bumps, and he also adds his own sixteen-button InTech MIDI trigger pad to playback effects out of sight of the window.

Heaven’s D7 is currently controlling approximately fifty intelligent lights, primarily Robe Pointes and LED washes, and it also triggers the five video walls and lasers. On top of that, there are thirty-six channels of incandescent lighting.

Avolites has been a key component of Subfrantic’s rental inventory since the late 1990s, with Pearls, Tigers, Sapphires and Arenas and now their first D7-215 available for shows and events. This D7 is the first lighting console that Subfrantic has sold to Heaven, but their initial encounter with the club was back in 2005, when the company purchased Heaven’s then-old PA system and repurposed it for another client.

(Photo: Sarah O’Gorman)

www.avolites.com

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