Sunday night I attended what might be the best concert of my life thus far.

Going in, I’d never seen Radiohead and had only heard fish tales about how life-changing it is seeing them live. Leaving creatively inspired by their jaw-dropping performance, calling the show life-changing might not be all that far off. It certainly made me appreciate the tremendous effort of this band and unbelievable work done by concert production crews.

In addition to the amazing sound and performance, the band’s lighting was incredible. I spent the entire drive home trying to figure out the possible logistics of what I’d just witnessed the two hours prior. Stretching my imagination, my conclusion was strips of LCD screens — like 70-foot tall stiff vertical blinds — functioning as one very, very large display. This conception wasn’t correct, but many really smart lighting experts are trying to decipher what Andi Watson, Radiohead’s lighting and visuals designer, has created.

From the few technical details that I’ve found, it seems that the band, in hopes of reducing their carbon footprint, hired British lighting manufacturers i-Pix to rapidly create two rigs worth of custom lighting fixtures in just over a month.

Watson liked it and thought the fixture was exactly what he wanted, which ultimately resulted in an order to produce 206 fixtures (enough for two rigs) from scratch in just over five weeks. Ewington comments, “From our experience, most shows spend months in discussion and a maximum of six weeks in prep, so this timescale did not come as a surprise.” He adds, “Our first fixture, the Satellite, was developed under similar circumstances to coincide with Radiohead’s last tour.”

After seeing them in action, I understand why lighting professionals are, as a photographer for a lighting trade magazine told a friend, “very curious.” Some of these trade magazines have begun what is sure to be a summer of discussion on Radiohead’s groundbreaking setup.

And in this month’s Rolling Stone, there is an article on summer tours in which Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood addressed the lighting on this tour:

I’m excited about the lighting. It will be LED onstage, which has low amp output, to reduce the carbon impact. We realized it is going to be quite chilly out there this time. Normally, it is hot onstage when you use incandescent lights. We thought maybe we should get some gas-powered patio burners to keep us warm. But we’ll just put some extra layers on.

Video clips of the stage show shot throughout the tour have begun appearing on Flickr and Vimeo.

Also: GvsB has tons of excellent shots from the Dallas show.