Nico Riot Supports Skip the Use Fan Experience on Festival Tour with CHAUVET

	To create consistent looks that instantly connect to audiences, Riot kept his color palette simple.

The punk rock band Skip the Use was on the French and Belgian festival circuit this summer, supported by designer Nico Riot, working with a floor package that features 16 CHAUVET Professional Color STRIKE M motorized strobe-washes supplied by MPM of Lorraine.

"I needed powerful fixtures to match all the festivals' packed rigs, so my shows look consistent everywhere -- and the Color STRIKE M is certainly powerful," Riot says. "Keeping every look as stripped-back as possible while fitting everything into the budget, I am striving for a timeless, elegant aesthetic in a design that's distinct enough to be consistent even when festival stages vary."

Riot positioned his Color STRIKE Ms evenly, having eight units upstage and eight downstage. He relied on the upstage fixtures for backwashing, saturating the stage's red curtains with color, and illuminating the band's heart backdrop at the appropriate moments. The downstage units were for "clean up-key looks," providing low-angle front lighting on the band and classic strobing effects.

To create consistent looks that instantly connect to audiences, Riot kept his color palette simple. "There are actually only five colors in the entire show: open white, CTO, CTB, red, and a pale red," he says. "I wanted to build a cohesive theme around red to mirror the album artwork and visual identity Skip the Use created for this cycle. It really was as simple and focused as that."

Riot's use of dark space played a "huge role" in setting a gripping aura on stage, he says. To add to the power of these shadowy looks, he often accompanied them with dimly lit fog. The interplay of light and shadows was particularly effective in accenting the design's giant heart prop, which was open and empty in the middle of the stage. "I carried that heart concept as far as I could across the rest of the rig," he says. "The band has immense stage presence, so my goal was to deliver high-impact moments while using the lighting and not distract from their performance."

As this year's festival season ends, Skip the Use will kick off a club tour at the Zenith in Paris, with Riot once again providing the design.