Entec Coordinates Production for X Japan

West London, UK based Entec Sound & Light coordinated the full European touring production package and sourced key crew for the recent X Japan tour, and also supplied lighting equipment.

This was the first foray into Europe for the cult Japanese heavy metal superstars founded in 1989, who reformed in 2009 having disbanded in 1997 at the peak of a remarkable career in Japan. They have recorded 4 studio albums and sold over 30 million records and 2 million home videos.

Entec was brought in by the band's tour director Richard Ames who due to his own busy schedule touring with Supertramp in Canada, realized that it would be a practical and tactical decision to get an experienced European based rental company onboard to advance and handle all aspects of the tour, including crewing and sorting all the technical production departments.

Ames says, "I specifically wanted a company that was dynamic and agile, with the resources and ability to deal with finer details and some of the more esoteric requirements - like masseurs and teleprompters - as well as the bigger picture and all the more standard production requirements." He adds that it was also vital that they had a harmonious relationship with other technical suppliers.... to which Entec proved the perfect solution.

The Ames/Entec connections date back to the 1970s in various forms, however this is the first time that they have worked directly together.

Entec's Noreen O'Riordan, described as "the star of the show" by Ames, took up the challenges with great enthusiasm and alacrity, energizing her vast contacts book, knowledge and industry reputation.

The venues ranged from 1,000 capacity theatres to 6,000 seated arenas - mix of flown and ground supported - all of which presented their own individual challenges.

In addition to bringing together sound, lighting and video elements, Entec also booked the buses, trucks and catering, appointed a production manager, LD and a stage manager and also supplied the lighting system from their own hire stock.

The month timeframe was extremely tight to get everything sorted, and the other issue was that it took place amidst one of the busiest two week periods of the UK summer festival calendar, with major events like Glastonbury and T In The Park, seeing all the regular leading industry players already at capacity.

Entec booked Wembley Arena for three days of production rehearsals. They brought Simon Tutchener as the production manager, Chris Gadd (Gaddie) in as stage manager and John Ashton as production rigger, with Ames flying in from the US in time to take up the management reins after the first show in London, with everything set up and ready to roll.

Entec worked with Concert Sound Clair, agents for Clair Global to supply the sound equipment. X Japan's FOH engineer ML Procise III specs Clair PA systems for all their live work and this was the system he wanted, which was coordinated between Entec and Andy Davies.

Icarus Wilson-Wright was asked to design video playback and visuals system and run the playback, which was stored on a media server and played out to onstage Spider 30 LED surfaces supplied by <>CT. Entec asked Phil White to create a lighting design that would work and look fabulous in all of the venues - from Shepherds Bush Empire to Paris Zenith, and they also supplied all the lighting equipment and three crew, Simon "Boff" Howarth and Stephen "Sven" Jolly. The rig included Vari*Lite 3000 and Martin Pro MAC 700 moving heads, about 20 bars of six PARs and a grandMA console for control.

The backline consisted of kit from a combination of John Henry's and Music Bank.

Knowing the importance of keeping any crew happy, particularly during a hectic schedule like this, Eat To The Beat were booked to keep the gastronomy flowing, Fly By Night took care of the trucking and four crew and band buses were sourced from four different companies - due to almost all vehicles in the UK being pre-booked during this period.

The band's management X Project Live arranged an eight camera video record by The 400 Company to collect footage of the London and Paris shows for a future DVD.

With barely a month to get everything arranged and confirmed the email correspondence between Ames and O'Riordan was intense, hitting the 500 mark on the first day ....

"It was a great challenge, but that's what we all like," says O'Riordan "The pressure was ramped up by the band's level of expectations having not played Europe as yet, and part of our brief was to ensure that these were met if not surpassed, so they enjoyed the same standards of production excellence that they are used to in Japan and the USA. The whole process resulted in some great teamwork and co-operation, illustrating just how much people, personalities and professionalism can really make it rock."

The European tour was such a great success that X Japan will be taking some crew from it on to the next sections, which will see them play South America and Asia later in the year.