These New Puritans Create Cinematic Lightscape with Satore Studio

The art rock band's latest live project again enlisted Tupac Martir as production designer and Satore Studio for lighting, visuals, real-time content, and re-edits.

In support of the sister release to 2019's LP Inside The Rose, February saw the digital unveiling of These New Puritans' (TNP) 19-track album, The Cut (2016-2019). Made up of new songs, orchestral interludes, reworkings and remixes of past material, the tracks were brought to life on stage with a captivating production design.

After six weeks of preparation, the band played London's Barbican Centre, a venue chosen for its "brutality," according to the band's drummer and creative director, George Barnett. In partnership with twin brother Jack, the electronic experimentalists have already enjoyed a decade of working with Satore Studio founder Martir.

Martir says: "George came to us with some ideas of what he wanted the show to look like. TNP are known for making incredibly beautiful videos, and he wanted to bring that aesthetic to this live show.

"Video was very important in this instance. All of TNP previous shows have been primarily based around light, so we wanted to add an element of video, yet not rely on it as a constant throughout the performance and allow the visuals to differ in style. The combination of pre-recorded material, visuals created in Unreal and TouchDesigner, and an intrinsic lightshow gave us the final looks desired.

"The content is made up of work by many directors," says Martir. "All from previous music videos or content that the band has commissioned."

Satore also created a lot of content in-house for this show. "There was some trial and error in making sure that the visuals represented the right feeling and combination of lighting."

Barnett describes the band's live ideal as "a perfectly unified band containing all extremes of our sound, and the fullest extension of TNP imagery."

He also spoke about the use of technology in such an art-led performance environment: "It enhances it, and in this case, was necessary. However, there must be threads that guide the use of technologies and techniques.

"Tupac's the best -- he has a great way of zooming out, directing, and guiding vision -- adding massively to the conceptuality and structure of the show, both in a passionate and a meticulous way. He has a beautiful sense of modesty with lighting, leaving space and stillness where necessary and then absolutely blowing things apart. It's very rare, and I'm lucky to find someone like Tupac to work with."

Operating on an MA Lighting grandMA2 and using an array of fixtures, including Robe Robin Pointes, Claypaky A.leda B-Eye K10s, Claypaky Stormy CC white LEDs, generic PAR 64 parcans, GLP impression X4 Bar 20s and Pulsar ChromaBank Mk2s, was Satore Studio event lighting director Muly Yechezkel.

"Muly did a terrific job with our lighting," notes Barnett.

White Light supplemented Satore's tech rider alongside the Barbican's house lighting.

For video content control, freelance engineer Benjamin Gittos used a disguise gx 2 media server which took a live feed from Kinect Azure cameras and fed it into both TouchDesigner and Unreal Engine interactive controllers. The images were then projected onto three screens. Programming was achieved via Kinect V2.

Further bespoke video servers -- made in-house at Satore -- were also utilized.

Barnett continues: "Working with Satore Studio was wonderful; they have a very imaginative team. We tried a lot of different ideas, pursued what worked, and really honed everything in a way we haven't before.

"Alex Leyva, a brilliant producer at Satore, is sharp, methodical, and understanding; she understood our vision straight away, making the most out of any avenue we could, maximizing and perfecting what was possible.

"Having a crew that is invested is vital; there is no room for half measures in these projects. Combining and bringing together all these artists for one performance was a real undertaking -- and the results felt good!"