Marilyn Manson embarked on a series of pan-European arena and theatre shows at the end of 2017 followed by a US tour with French LD, Nicolas Riot (of Chirac Design), utilising LED fixtures from German Light Products, including 15 GLP JDC1 hybrid strobes and 35 GLP X4 Bar 20 battens.
All inventory was supplied by the band’s regular vendor, UK rental company Entec Sound & Light, while North American supplier Delicate Productions provided the gear for the US leg. Entec’s MD (and Head of Lighting) Noreen O’Riordan confirmed that while this was the first time Entec has worked with the LD, they have a long-standing relationship with Manson’s Production Manager, Matt Doherty. They purchased the X4 Bars in response to the LD’s rider. “We know the product is a good one, having successfully rented them for use on other shows,” she explained. “The current Marilyn Manson tour presented us with the perfect opportunity to commit to a purchase.”
Yet it was the GLP JDC1 that has caused the biggest stir after Marilyn Manson himself was adamant he wanted them on the show. Prior to this stint, Riot had covered only a handful of shows with the band after dates in the States were suspended after Manson injured himself while performing on stage.
“I wasn’t really aware of the product to be honest until Matt Doherty emailed me saying ‘Manson wants that strobe’. I have no idea how he found that product but I checked right away on the GLP website and instantly knew that something cool would come out of this product when looking at the specs.”
He has been using 15 units — divided between upstage and downstage — but said he wished he could have secured more. “I tried the rig with the ChamSys MagicQ pixel mapper and I was really excited about the result. I made three different layers of Pixmap, one per section, and the result was intense.”
The 3 different dimming sections were assigned, one as a Wash part, one for the Strobe and one to control the pixel map section. “Then it was really easy to manage the JDC1 on all the different cue-stacks. I was really surprised by the strobe, with its in-built FX section — I wasn’t expecting that at all.”
He continued: “Most of the time the strobe would pop out of the Wash section. Usually when you use multi-element fixtures it’s hard to keep every effect running at full tilt — but with the JDC1 strobe you can run full blast even when you have busy Wash effects going on. The only tricky thing is that you would need those JDC1’s permanently in your inventory as you would have a hard time morphing or cloning those into a festival rig as there are no equivalents.”
As for the X4 Bars, the first time he saw them in a live environment was at Linkin Park’s summer European shows. “I was really surprised by how the Bars were kicking through [Linkin Park] LD Céline Royer’s design,” he said. “On the Gojira tour I was using a similar product but was really struggling to have enough punch to use them as a back wash and batten beam as well. So I changed my design because I wasn’t able to find the right product — but after seeing Céline’s design [using the Bars], I was like, yep that’s what I need!”
The LD ran 35 GLP X4 Bar 20’s on the rig — 2 upstage and a couple on the flown rig. “The first row is mainly for backdrops,” he explained. “We have multiple layers of backdrops and drapes, so the tilts and zooms are perfect for keeping the backdrops perfectly lit as the show goes on — the backdrops move further upstage as they drop. The second row is for backwash, and sometimes they go to backdrop position when needed. The flown X4 Bars are mostly used for the narrow-batten look that I like.”
Riot concluded: “I will definitely go nuts on the next Gojira tour using JDC1s.”