Aktuelle News & Schlagzeilen

Kille Knobel chooses Elation fixtures for Pearl Jam’s “Dark Matter” tour

Pearl Jam embarked on their “Dark Matter” world tour in May 2024, sharing their introspective brand of rock with audiences across North America and Europe before heading to New Zealand and Australia in November. Lighting designer Kille Knobel has worked with the band since 2000 and complements the “Dark Matter” shows with a design that uses Elation KL Panel XL softlights as a key visual element.

The show brings video projection to the forefront with soft, organic visuals and minimalist lighting. When choosing fixtures for the tour earlier this year, lighting vendor Upstaging hosted a fixture shootout in Los Angeles for the designer, where she ultimately selected the KL Panel XL and Proteus Maximus as part of a larger lighting package. The fixtures were essential in creating the desired balance between video projection and lighting, two visual components that trade prominence throughout the show.

Knobel reveals that the band has always liked color washes and in the early iteration of Pearl Jam shows - before she came on board - they often played beneath PAR can rigs. “The band loves the feel and simplicity of soft color washes and they brought that back up as a discussion topic for this tour”, she shares. “In the early design phases, I kept coming back to the idea of a ‘light box’ above the band to create very dispersed light, like you would have in a film shoot, but in a way that wouldn’t disrupt the projection. The KL Panel XL gave me the control I needed, and with the addition of barndoors and intensifier lenses, I could manage the light perfectly.”

Knobel’s lighting concept included five lighting pods, each pod equipped with two softlight types, a row of KL Panel XLs working with beam wash moving heads (Elation Proteus Brutus for the European shows). “The pods were a hybrid idea”, says the designer, “a combination of a light box with a beam wash fixture that could move and do more but was also soft.”

Knobel says that because the color is so rich, the KL Panel XL fixtures are best seen when they stand on their own. “I add them to contribute to the big looks, but when they’re the backbone light of the look, that’s my favorite way to use them”, she states. “And because of the lens and the fact that you can do cell control, when you do run effects on them, it’s actually very organic looking. Because it’s such a diffused lens, you don’t see pixelation, which fits with Pearl Jam’s visual aesthetic. With a dimmer effect on them, it looks really good.”

Knobel, who has 75 songs programmed in the lighting console, says she has a whole range of colors in her palette that she calls dirty colors: “It’s really easy to create them with hard-edge lights but it’s hard to achieve them with LED panel lights. That was my only challenge with the KL Panels - the colors are so pretty, I couldn’t make them look dingy enough.”

She describes the look in a song that features a slow progression of panels coming on randomly over a minute and a half with some strobing. “I just love the simplicity of it, the edginess, where it feels like you’re in a different space, not a traditional rock and roll application.” Each of the KL Panel XL units in the show is outfitted with an intensifier lens that is optimized for longer throws by increasing the center intensity by over thirty percent while keeping the field smooth.

Between the focus and the use of barndoors on the KL Panels, Knobel was able to control the light and avoid light spill. “I was a little nervous about it because there’s a lot of horsepower in the rig”, she says. “I needed to know, in those songs where the lighting was doing more of the lifting, was I going to blow out the projection. The way that the fixtures were utilized and placed, I had faith in the concept and it ended up working out great.” A standout look that Knobel says defines how she wanted to use the light features a single KL Panel XL in a minimalist, low-level blue wash that transitions between songs, creating an intimate, unconventional rock show atmosphere.

In addition to the KL Panel XL, Knobel utilized Elation Proteus Maximus fixtures as the hard-edged lighting component. “I wasn’t happy with the Maximus in a previous non-music application, but in this shootout, it blew me away”, she says. “I walked out of the demo thinking, the Maximus wins hands down and they became an essential part of the rig.” The Maximus, positioned upstage, on the sides, and in stadium wings, provide dynamic backlighting and effects along with occasional washes into the audience or onto the stage, complementing the softer wash from the KL Panel XLs.

Alongside Lighting Designer/Director Kille Knobel, the “Dark Matter” crew comprised Production Manager John Lafferty, Production Designer/Technical Producer Spike Brant (Nimblist), Lighting Programmers Will Flavin, Mark Humphrey and Eric Marchwinski, Creative Director Rob Sheridan, Video Director Blue Leach, FOH Lighting Tech Dallas Sisson, Lighting Crew Chief Mike Green, and Head Rigger Davy McCready. The US lighting crew included Brendan Langord, Adam Morrison, Zachary Boebel, Luke Dobson, Emilion Aguilar and Maya Hughes. Fuse Technical Group was the video vendor.

(Photos: Rob Sheridan/Dallas Sisson)

www.elationlighting.com

© 1999 - 2025 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories