LIVE MUSIC PRODUCTION
TO LED OR NOT TO LED Adele’s Munich residency (this image) employed a record-breaking wall of LED panels, while Hozier (below) opted for his screens to be masked with a soft, metallic gauze
“The brief was that Hozier doesn’t like LEDs,” adds Phil Mercer, commercial director at Universal Pixels. “They put up a metallic gauze in front of all the LED surfaces to soften them, and that took on a structure of its own. The idea was to be projection-like rather than stark.” According to Mercer, Hozier was relatively involved in the concert’s production, mostly contributing his ideas and thoughts on the overall aesthetic. “It’s more collaborative than usual with younger artists,” he admits. “The themes in many of these songs are very earthy and organic.” They often reference nature and contemplate our relationship to it. “Although there’s a lot of technology on display, it’s all there to serve the music.” Strange agrees: “It’s not ‘let’s turn our lights up as bright as possible and make this into a disco‘ – it’s all quite subtle.” “He was never an insignificant artist,” says Mercer, but Hozier continues to be a star on the rise. As a result, “it’s taken on a life of its own, this tour,” he admits, as Unreal Unearth nears the two-year mark. “If you’re going that long off one album, you have to keep freshening up the show.” That’s what Universal Pixels is working on now. The tour is set to last through October 2025. TURN(ING) TABLES It’s no secret by now that Adele’s Munich residency broke world records.
Performing in a purpose-built outdoor venue at Munich Messe, the British singer-songwriter and pop star delivered some of her greatest hits to an audience of over 700,000 across ten nights. But Adele wasn’t the only remarkable thing on stage; an enormous, curved LED wall behind her, comprised of ROE Visual CB5 Mk II panels, spanned 244x18m. Setting a new Guinness World Record, the expansive LED screen consisted of 4625 individual panels – in both concave and convex configurations – at 6000-nit brightness, giving fans an unforgettable experience. The panels’ heat dissipation ensured their consistent performance
throughout each outdoor concert (which included a fair amount of pyrotechnics too), while anti-reflective qualities meant the visuals looked good from any angle. The wall displayed both live footage and pre-recorded content. Its extremely wide aspect ratio resembled a larger- than-life-sized film strip that far surpassed CinemaScope. Of course, Adele’s residency also came with all the usual technical requirements, from media servers to audio mixers, loudspeakers and the like. To connect 230 crew members at any given time, the team used the Riedel Communications Artist 128 digital
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