Steven Douglas Unfolds Narrative on Hozier Unreal Unearth Tour with CHAUVET Professional

	"I've always been a fan of strong dominant colors with accents interspersed among them," says Douglas. "Most of the color choices on this tour were linked to some reference or other with the music." Photo: Kate Cummings

Andrew Hozier's global Unreal Unearth Tour, along with its lighting design by Steven Douglas, drew its inspiration from Dante's timeless Divine Comedy. This connection is evident in the continuously changing levels of sometimes haunting and always evocative looks that flow throughout the multi-award winning Irish star's show. To do justice to the Florentine poet-philosopher, Douglas CHAUVET Professional COLORado PXL Curve 12s.

"Everything came from the initial creative conversations with Andrew (Hozier) about the [Unreal Unearth] album," says Douglas. "The album is heavily inspired by Dante's Inferno, so in a loose fashion we tried to sculpt the show to have different moments -- also we progressed with a kind of arc that sees us go through different levels and return to the world at the end.

"Also, because the artist's closing song is traditionally 'Work Song' for most of his career, the show ends on an acapella vocal moment that slowly fades out," continues Douglas. "It was important to mirror that, so the opening cue was a single narrow light that Andrew steps into from the darkness, and then grows as the song begins."

At different points throughout the show, Douglas conveys a Dantesque sense of moving through different levels of being by having images (often unsettling ones, moving quickly across his video wall). For example, for the song "Nobody's Soldier," he uses his rig's automated screens, having them descend from the roof. Shaped like television screens, they display "frantic images" portending a growing wave of chaos.

For the song "Francesca," always a "moment that the show descends through the levels of hell," there is a fast-moving drop represented on the screens. Douglas uses an animation wheel effect shooting though the vanish screens to give the idea the video content was being projected rather than being from a LED wall.

"The choice of content was always very deliberate on this show," notes Douglas. "Andrew was always heavily involved in that process along with me and Brian Kenny from our content creator Lightscape Visuals.

"We went with automated video screens on this year's tour, because we wanted to be able to change the shape of the stage," Douglas continues. "We also wanted to be able to hide the band for moments, but then also still allow them to be seen as it is quite important to see that everyone is playing live all the time, there's no timecode or playback on the show."

While the automated screens were new for the 2025 edition of the Unreal Unearth Tour, the COLORado PXL Curves were carried over from last year's run. "On previous tours, I had them on the side trusses," Douglas says of the high output battens, which were supplied by Christie Lites (for North America) and Neg Earth (Europe). "However, with the change in angles on this tour and given that we would be playing at much bigger venues, including arenas, I wanted to beef up the look on the downstage edge, so I had two rows of PXLs surrounding the band."

Douglas used 30 PXL Curve 12 units in his rig, 16 on the downstage edge, and 14 on the upstage edge. "Initially, we went with the Curves for a song called 'Movement,' which on album Cycle Two, had a huge cue of gobos out on the audience that always worked well, but I wanted a fresh iteration of that look. However, once we had the PXL fixtures, it quickly became apparent that the versatility of their individual tilt and the zoom features made them a lot more useful for the whole show and not just that one look."

The RGBW PXL Curve 12s also helped Douglas set the mood for each song with color. "I've always been a fan of strong dominant colors with accents interspersed among them," says Douglas. "Most of the color choices on this tour were linked to some reference or other with the music."

Sometimes, this connection isn't obvious. For example, when Hozier performs his haunting hit "Unknown," with its lyrics describing a lake of fire, one would expect to see reds and other warm tones covering the set. But instead, Douglas artfully blankets the stage in icy cold blues and whites. "The song is based on the 9th Circle of Hell, which Dante viewed as a frozen place because it was furthest from the sun," explains Douglas, viewing the set through the master's eyes in such a manner, that truly lives up to the term "poetic."