LIVE EVENTS
Hey hey, it s Music Festival Month on the Backstage Pass blog, and today we take a look at the biggest stage-design goss from the 2015 Governers Ball, namely, the debut of Deadmau5 s new Thunder Dome . Canadian electronic producer Deadmau5 is well known for his audio-visual gymnastics, and the Thunderdome s first live set was highly anticipated, so it was a bit of a disappointment when technical difficulties dogged the first few. Deadmau5 tweeted,
Rehearse all you want, you re still at the mercy at the fuckup who doesn t know how 3 phase power works. Lol. Amazing recovery tho!
But all good things to those who wait: when the dome did get rolling, it was all the LED insanity you might expect from a collaboration of greats. The dome was created by killer lighting designer Leroy Bennett, a twenty-year veteran of the industry who s worked with everyone from Lady Gaga to Prince.
After the technical issue was resolved, the geodesic dome split open horizontally, and the smaller dome that contained Deadmau5 opened vertically, like a hatch. This allowed Deadmau5 to lord over the proceedings, but before these Russian nesting dolls of neon geometry unpacked themselves, the structure s effect was almost eerie. Because Deadmau5 was hard to discern within it and especially because it continued to light up after the audio cut out the setup seemed to have a life of its own, existing autonomously as a pulsating electronic organism that had more agency over what was transpiring onstage than Deadmau5 himself.
Hot diggety, that s some description. Brace for sonic assault:
More, please!
