Bugzy Malone – B-Inspired Tour

The Requirement

Bugzy Malone is vehemently independent and so it was fitting that his label - Ill Gotten Records - chose one of the UK’s largest independent technical services suppliers, Adlib, to provide audio, lighting, and video for his most recent tour.

Following his sold out “King of the North” Manchester shows in 2017, grime icon Bugzy Malone toured the UK in 2018 including two homecoming shows at Mayfield Depot Manchester, and a big London show at the Printworks.

The Solution

It was the support from Adlib’s team and the ability to access sound, lighting, and video equipment and expertise from one supplier that led Bugzy and his team to choose Adlib.

Adlib’s Head of Video & Lighting Rich Rowley explains:

“Because Bugzy was alone on stage, the video and light show was his support rather than a band, so it was exceptionally important that the visuals would be high-impact and engaging. Bugzy and his team didn’t have a specific brief so we went to his studio, sat down, and brainstormed some ideas over a weekend. Then we came back to Adlib HQ and sat with Alex, our in-house designer, and refined the concept into a full lighting and set design incorporating a video wall backdrop. At this point we also started talking to Tom Webber, one of Adlib’s in-house lighting designers, who ended up being the LD for the tour.”

Whilst the lighting was designed and supplied by Adlib, the video content was created under the supervision of Ali Karim Esmaail from Ill Gotten Records with Adlib providing the screens, infrastructure, and technical support.

Video was operated by Adlib’s Rob Bickerstaff. An Absen A3 3.9mm LED video wall was driven from a Resolume media server but this show presented a unique challenge – how do you sync video and track when the track is being played out live from turntables on stage? Adlib’s engineers had previously seen the timecode sync [https://timecodesync.com/] system on Creamfields. Using it on this tour allowed Resolume to identify the track being played out of the Pioneer Nexus CDJs and to sync the video to the track.

Lighting was operated by Adlib designer Tom Webber on a grandMA3 light console. The majority of venues had good in-house lighting rigs and Tom supplemented these systems with a floor package of Mac Aura XB, Clay Paky Axcor 300 Beam, Prolight Solar Wash, Elation DTW Bar fixtures all rigged on upright sticks of Prolite Pre-rig truss.

Audio was a combination of house system and engineers supplemented by a package of Sennheiser wireless in-ears and Shure UHF-R wireless microphones supplied by Adlib who also provided a Pioneer Nexus turntable package. Sam Gallagher, one of Adlib’s audio engineers, bedded the system in and provided additional support by mixing the first few shows of the tour.

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