CHAUVET Professional Lights The Darkness Tour

	"The Darkness has always had that classic rock and roll feel to their music," says Garcia. "Our mission was to present that feeling with our lighting."

"An album for people who love hard rock of bygone eras..." That was how one admiring music critic described Dreams on Toast, the album from The Darkness, released in March. Indeed, for this British band, it has always been all about rock and roll for this gifted quartet since its 2000 formation.

Lighting designer and programmer David Garcia, of Kansas City-based Bigtime Lighting Design, appreciates that. The band's rock roots were front and center in his mind when kicking off the recent tour. "The Darkness has always had that classic rock and roll feel to their music," says Garcia, who worked with a set created by production designer and video director Eric Cathcart, also of Bigtime Lighting Design, and crew chief Tom Rawlinson. "Our mission was to present that feeling with our lighting."

Working with a lighting rig supplied by Wallingon, UK-based Zigzag Lighting, the design team accomplished this mission in many ways, one of which was through the inspired use of light angles. "We chose to put ladder trusses of fixtures offstage to present the LED screens we had, which displayed The Darkness logo and IMAG images," Garcia say. "We arranged these fixtures in straight lines to create the classic par can look like part of the rock vibe."

Adding an extra element of light angles and movement to the design was a collection of CHAUVET Professional COLORado PXL Curve 12 motorized batten fixtures. "We had a row of PXL curves upstage," Garcia says. "We really wanted their presence to be visible when they were on. This added to the dynamic looks they made that matched the personalities of the musicians onstage and pumped up the energy level."

With its 12 individually controllable, 200-degree fully pixel-mappable tilting heads and wide (5.7-degree to 36.3-degree) zoom range, the COLORado PXL Curve 12 opened a variety of creative options for Garcia.

Garcia also drew on the color rendering capabilities of his battens' RGBW LEDs to conjure up an array of evocative hues. He noted that he normally likes to go with deep reds, ambers, blues, and Congo, but he broadened his palette this time around.

He went with a "heavy use of CTO" for some songs, because the band wanted "more of a sepia feel" onstage. That color tone helped enhance the mood, creating an environment for fans looking to immerse themselves in the hard rock vibe of a "bygone" era.