LD Andrew Liddle Tours New Order with an Avolites Arena

	Andrew Liddle on the Avolites Arena for New Order's tour. Photo: Dom Henry

British band New Order's recent UK and European tour in support of their latest album, Music Complete, featured a vibrant lighting design controlled via an Avolites Arena console.

The tour marked the first time lighting designer Andrew Liddle opted for the Arena -- Avolites' latest console.

"I was really keen to give the Arena a try and it proved very worthwhile," says Liddle. "I saw it to be a natural progression from the Avolites Tiger Touch I've been using since 2010, and found it to be a whole lot more. Hardware wise, it's the complete package -- lid off and good to go. For what it is, it's really compact, not too bulky or weighty, and the layout's great and the second screen is useful too."

Alongside the main display, the Arena offers a second touch screen providing an additional workspace window and also labeling the adjacent macro buttons and rotary pots. These fully assignable playback encoder pots allow intuitive control of channels and effects. The six LCD screens display electronic legends for 30 faders, for speedy access to all the user's playbacks, fixtures, and palettes.

Liddle's main rig consisted of Robe BMFL 1700 spots, Clay Paky Sharpys, Martin Professional MAC Vipers, and ETC Source Fours. Hawthorn supplied all of the lighting and the Arena console.

"I really enjoyed using the Arena and very quickly grew accustomed to it," Liddle continues. "I found everything was where I wanted it to be. There are also nice little touches, like four rotatory encoders which you can use for assigning anything from smoke to video wall brightness. The external triggering using MIDI worked really well -- basically I got everything out of it that I needed!"

Offering seamless multi-user compatibility, the Arena can be used as master, back-up, or extra programming surface, considerably cutting your programming time by allowing multiple Titan programmers to work simultaneously, before the main console takes charge. For this tour, Liddle used his Arena as the master console networked to a Tiger Touch II as backup.

New Order performed at UK venues including London's Brixton Academy, Liverpool Olympia, and Wolverhampton Civic Hall. In Europe, they played Berlin's Tempodrom, Ancienne Belgique, Brussels and the Casino de Paris.