If you like technology, you'll love Ed Sheeran's show. Yes, I'm aware that Sheeran's fans are primarily young females, but I don't care. I think he writes great songs with great music and he sings like a choir of angels. Part of the reason is his loop pedal that he works like a magician. But what really tied it together for me was the combination of lighting and video.
At times, the show was quiet as a church service and at times it was a cacophony of percussion, strings, and vocals. The crazy thing is that there was only one person on stage, unless you count Sheeran's loop pedal, which he used to build songs live on stage. Technology, in the right hands, can be pure magic, and that's what it felt like when Smith's lighting and video helped heighten the experience and amplify the event. Although much of the show is pre-programmed into his MA Lighting grandMA2, Sheeran's antics on stage are often improvised, meaning that Smith plays along anticipating every pedal stomp and pawing of Sheeran's 23" guitar, which he does to perfection. Despite some lag time from the Vari-Lite 880s, his timing is impeccable.
A big part of the show is the video backdrop, which is made up of 1-meter LED panels driven by two Green Hippo Hippotizer media servers (one live and one backup). In the show I saw at Stubb's in Austin, only part of the rig could fit in the venue, and Smith warned me that some of the video might not make sense. But what made perfect sense was the way the lighting and video blended seamlessly and punctuated the music with bursts of Atomic 3K strobes situated behind the semi-transparent panels.

Paul Smith has been running lights for over 20 years and he does it with skill and class. His show is smooth as glass punctuated with the occasional flash and trash where required, but it's always in harmony with what's going on on the stage.
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