Clay Paky Sharpys Bring Cutting Edge Technology to Massive '90s Nostalgia Party

	We Love the '90s concert in Norway

Clay Paky Sharpys have dazzled up-for-it crowds across Norway during a series of mammoth We Love the '90s concerts. This year, German group Scooter headlined, alongside '90s stalwarts Haddaway, E-Type, and the Vengaboys.

Lighting designer Philip Lindhfelt racked the Sharpys up at the rear of the stage and used them to beam directly onto the audience, which provided some spectacular, 1990s scanner-style, mid-air displays.

Playing to packed houses in arenas in the Norwegian cities of Stavanger, Bergen, Ålesund, and the capital Oslo, We Love the '90s was a sell out event. Lindhfelt used the Sharpy before but never quite like this, as he explains: "I used them primarily as an effects fixture. Bands such as Scooter are quite progressive in terms of their music. I needed a fixture that was fast to respond. While the speed and the brightness of the Sharpy make it an ideal fixture for an event like this they also allowed me to recreate the effect of the old fashioned scanner that LDs used back in '90s club-land, but with a modern twist!"

In fact Lindhfelt made considerable use of the Sharpys comprehensive feature set, creating looks that encompassed retro to modern day lighting, for everything from mid-air effects to gobo projection work on the stage: "I used the Sharpy a lot for big mid-air effects and retro scanner looks but I also used them for effects down on the stage. I found that with the frost and the prism I could also achieve wide gobo projection, which is brilliant."

Lindhfelt, who used a lot of big lasers in the show, was also impressed by the Sharpy brightness: "With so many lasers I was amazed to find that the Sharpy is almost as bright, that's pretty unusual," he laughs. "The Sharpy's perfectly parallel, laser-like beam and super smooth, speedy pan and tilt action have been very welcome on this show."

The fact that Sharpy also offers 14 different colors and 17 gobos, meant that Lindhfelt could alter the mood, pace, and atmosphere of the concert by using an array of dramatic mid-air effects and color.

The We Love the '90s tour sold out in every city with the bands playing to more than 26,000 music fans in Oslo alone. Pio Nahum, chief commercial officer for Clay Paky, says: "We are, as ever, delighted to see the Sharpy being used so creatively, in so many diverse ways, and on such a huge sell-out show. The bands may well all have been popular in the '90s but there's obviously nothing 1990s about the lighting!"

See Clay Paky at PLASA Focus: Nashville, July 11-12.