Robe on tour with Phoebe Bridgers

Intelligent, enigmatic, and hugely talented, the music of Phoebe Bridgers has been captivating an ever‐growing fanbase since her first album release in 2017, with lighting designer Spike Kienholz Inglis of Spike Design lucky enough to have been lighting the artist since those early days.

For the US leg of the tour, Spike specified a full Robe moving light rig – with 24 x MegaPointes, 24 x Spiiders, 16 x Tetra1s and 6 x FORTES – all supplied by Gateway Studios & Production from St Louis.

For the Phoebe Bridgers design, five of the FORTES were positioned on the deck with the sixth used as a centre rear key spot flown on a mid‐stage truss. Spike describes Robe’s current most powerful moving light as “fantastic” and appreciates the streamlined size for the brightness and power they emit. Their “lean and mean” physical appearance, “exceptional” gobo selection and even colour mixing are all features he appreciates. He is also particularly fond of the four‐colour selection on the colour wheel, which can be focused into a beautiful rainbow look from a single fixture. Of the 24 x MegaPointes, 16 were in the air and eight on the floor and they were the primary workhorses of the rig. “They look great and are extremely reliable,” he noted.

Eight of the Spiiders were on floor towers as sidelight, used heavily in place of traditional front lighting, with the rest mostly positioned as flown backlight. He likes the deep colours of the fixture, and also enjoys the option of the flower effect for subtle moments. The Tetra1 bars were positioned along the floor behind the row of performance risers and were used for creating beautiful kinetic flowing effects.

In moving to the UK and Europe for a run that largely consisted of festivals, the choice was made to only travel with a floor package, rather than the entire flown rig as well. Whilst attempts were made to secure the exact same Robe fixtures for the fixtures they would carry, some concessions had to be made as per availability. That said, they were able to obtain the 8 x Robe Spiiders and 8 x MegaPointes, which were supplemented with some other fixtures in place of the FORTES and Tetra1s. All fixtures were supplied by northwest London based Colour Sound Experiment.

The show was a careful blend of lighting and video, all cued from Spike’s Avolites Diamond 9 330 console in tandem with a disguise d3 media server rack. Spike was also responsible for the design and creation of all the playback video content.

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