Entec Supplies L'Arc-en-Ciel

UK lighting and sound rental company Entec provided production to Japanese rockers L'Arc-en-Ciel. Entec provided lighting, rigging, sound equipment, and crew, plus site and local coordination services for shows at Le Zenith in Paris and Indigo at the O2 Arena in London, and arranged pyrotechnics, video, trucking and buses.

L'Arc-en-Ciel, formed in 1991, has sold over 13 million albums and 16 million singles. Currently, the band is completing a world tour celebrating 20 years at the top of Japanese pop / rock.

Entec's project manager Noreen O'Riordan received the call from the band's production director Richard Ames. Entec handled full production and co-ordination for Ames on two X-Japan shows last year.

As well as supplying sound, lighting, and rigging directly, O'Riordan co-ordinated video requirements via Bluman Associates and special effects from Manic, trucking by Fly By Night, and buses from Phoenix.

She comments, "It is always an interesting challenge to coordinate a project with decision-makers spanning several continents and time differences adding to the logistics of the confirmation processes. It was my first time working under the direction of (New York-based) production manager Tom Hudak, which I enjoyed immensely." O'Riordan continued, "Both venues were incredibly helpful and the support given to us by Allen Spriggs for the London show and Pascal Larre for coordinating Paris was superb."

Entec's Ryan Brown crew chiefed the lighting and dealt with fitting L'Arc-en-Ciel's complex stadium lighting rig into the Zenith, from lighting director, Yasumasa Yuasa.

The starting point was an overhead mother grid constructed from 30cm Thomas Supertruss which provided the main overhead lighting positions. The moving lights were 50 GLP Impression XLs, plus 20 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots. These were joined by a large array of PAR cans. Twenty-four bars of six PARs were wrapped around the back of the stage, and in front of these was a 6m high by 20m wide Stealth video screen -- supplied by Bluman Associates.

The front truss featured more PARs and a scattering of eight-lites. There were 22 four-lite Moles with scrollers, 10 in the air and 12 on the deck, plus 12 Atomic strobes, and 12 Martin Professional MAC 700 profiles on the floor.

Yuasa brought his own grandMA console to run the lighting, together with the media server to feed the video.

Entec's Ed Hammond took care of sonicality at Le Zenith, with a large d&b system, into which L'Arc-en-Ciel hooked their own control and monitor system, featuring an Avid Profile console for front-of-house and a Yamaha PM5D onstage.

The main arrays each comprised eight d&b J-8s and two J-12s speakers a side, with eight Q-1s left-and-right for the side hangs, and six J-SUBS a side, ground stacked.

Two d&b Q-7s were used for infills, with most of the lower areas of the arena were easily covered by the main arrays. The system was controlled with Dolby Lake processing and driven by d&b D12 amplifiers.

It was designed by Hammond based on CAD drawings of the venue and modeled in d&b's ArrayCalc. Hammond was joined on the crew by James Kerridge, and they worked closely with band engineers Seiji Yokose, front-of-house, and Takatoshi Sugimoto, on monitors.

Richard Ames says, "Noreen again was fantastic with attention to detail, great co-ordination and communication, keeping everyone in the loop and continually updated."

L'Arc-en-Ciel's world tour finishes this summer with shows in the Nissan Stadium and Universal Studios in Japan plus two in Hawaii. Their twelfth album, Butterfly, was released in February.