HES intellaspots Enliven Stages for Indy bands Passion Pit, Glitch Mob

Andy Cass, LD for The Glitch Mob and lighting director for Passion Pit, was trying the intellaspots for the first time, and he ran them through their paces through a variety of show situations for both bands. Be it festivals, nightclubs, and “on the rocks” at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the intellaspots demonstrated their versatility in a variety of venues.

The Glitch Mob performs electronic sound fusion, playing laptop music together as an ensemble onstage. For their one-off at Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside of Denver, Cass pumped up the rig with 16 intellaspots. Placing them as floor fixtures, Cass said the units performed full beamage in the air. “They cut through a significant overhead rig and I did a little projection lighting back on the rocks.”

Passion Pit is an electro-pop band from Cambridge, MA. LD Marc Janowitz designed their tour, and for a short, week-long run of festivals and nightclubs, six intellaspots added another layer of light to the stage. Their run ended as headliners for the outdoor Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, TX.

“I loved the intellaspots,” Cass said. “They have a really large aperture opening, which lets the fixture be used as a spot or a wash. The optics are incredible. All the gobos and animation can be focused when they are zoomed all the way out.”

“In clubs I used the intellaspots mostly as the focal point of the rig because they’re so bright,” Cass noted, “and in festival situations I tried to integrate them with the rest of the lighting rig. In both situations I used them on the ground or on cases but that was primarily due to production concerns,” he said.

One feature he especially made use of with Passion Pit was the fixture’s Indigo Highlighter. The new feature provides designers with additional light output from four 1-watt indigo LEDs, thus increasing the layering abilities. Indigo Highlighter now comes standard on all intellaspots shipping from High End Systems’ manufacturing headquarters in Austin, TX.

“Because Passion Pit’s songs are stand alone pieces I would use them to light the band between songs,” he explained.