Andrew Liddle, the longstanding designer for New Order since the band’s emergence from Joy Division in the early ’80s, turned to Elation’s powerful Proteus Excalibur narrow-beam moving head to create lighting on the band’s recent tour across mainland Europe and the UK.
Liddle specified the Excalibur for the tour and says the choice came from a suggestion from Ryan Knutson at Brown Note Productions in Denver that eventually led to New Order utilising the fixtures on a short US tour this past March. “Since then, they have become an integral part of the show,” the designer noted, “working to expand into the audience the looks being created from five 30w full-colour lasers from ER Productions.”
Six Excaliburs were used for some of the band’s slower more melodic tracks like 1983’s ‘Your Silent Face’ where beams silhouetted the band with three interspersed lasers scanning roofward. For the EU/UK tour in September, while the core of the rig remained, Andrew added a further two sets of three Excaliburs for a total of 12 units, all supplied by UK rental and production house Siyan.
“We added six Excaliburs to the far offstage wings with a laser behind each wing group,” Liddle explained. “We also used them to create straight solid beam fans in some of the faster songs like ‘Temptation’ and added inevitable fixed to mixed blue flashes for ‘Blue Monday’, the prisms were great for indexed 90º bumps” Liddle said.
Siyan facilitated the design evolution previously at the O2 Arena in late 2021, played a crucial role in realising Andrew’s vision for the EU/UK tour.
