Light: an emotional response to music

Hamburg, Cologne, Berlin, Munich – these were the German cities that British band alt-J played in January 2018. On the road to promote their new album “Relaxer”, the tour took them on to play throughout Europe, India and the United States. The voice of lead singer Joe Newman is as unmistakeable as the band’s experimental blend of styles. And another unique element of the tour is the light and stage design by Jackson Gallagher and Jeremy Lechterman, prize-winners at PLASA in London in 2017.

While alt-J were playing medium-sized venues on their 2015 tour of Germany, this January 2018 they filled an almost sold-out Max Schmeling Halle in Berlin (capacity: 12,000) followed by Munich’s Olympiahalle the next evening (capacity: 15,500). Applying the light sparingly and concentratedly during several numbers, young U.S. designers Jackson Gallagher and Jeremy Lechterman, a duo also known as FragmentNine, conjured a club atmosphere in the huge event space in Berlin. Their accentuated light concept, playing with areas of brightness and shadow, keeps the contours of the stage and equipment in the dark. Although the three musicians, Joe Newman (guitar/vocals), Thom Green (drums) and Gus Unger-Hamilton (keyboards), hardly move, they are dramatic apparitions, with only their faces and instruments illuminated. Focussing the light like this works even at large distances in huge venues and fixes the audience’s eyes on the stage. And it makes it clear that this is no one-man show with a star in a pool of light but a band; the musicians are presented as a unit. Instead of bathing the stage and audience in flashy, whirling show lighting, Gallagher and Lechterman create images and moments of impressive clarity and spatiality. Videos and spotlights form homogenous areas of colour and form, making the stage sparkle and creating the illusion of it moving, radiating, pulsating. When the beat intensifies, laser and stroboscope effects and ‘storms’ of light are the response. It is this dynamic interchanging with ‘soft’ lighting that distinguishes FragmentNine’s design from what is currently to be seen at most concerts. And it is what convinced the jury presiding over the “Knight of Illumination Award” to honour the young U.S. designer duo last year.