In true professional pop cabaret style, Britney Spears embraces a whole gamut of musical pastiches - clubby, moody, raunchy, jazzy and pure pop without so much as a pause for one of her famous breathy gasps.

The ultimate post-modern Pop Princess is often in the frontline of detractors. Being young, female and successful itself is enough to inflame some of the old farts brigade, but while there may be an abundance of critics out there ready to take a pop at her, the important thing is that her public still adores her her.

She's also become a cultural phenomenon. An internet search reveals complete overkill with hundreds of thousands of sites dedicated to Britney worship, offering photos galore, comments, appreciation, information, fanzines plus plenty of intellectual conjecturing, debate and degree theses on the activities on and off stage of the ubiquitous Ms Spears. This impressive range of info-overload generated by one icon is surely topped by the excellent Britney Spears Guide to Semi-Conductor Physics (www.britneyspears.ac/lasers).

Culture aside, the most striking visual element of the Onyx Hotel show is the video. Two large semi-circular cylindrical towers dominate the set architecture designed by LD Steve Cohen and Jim Day. These are constructed from Barco MiPix low res LED bricks. One is solid MiPix and the other has six skeletal like half-rings of MiPix, with gaps in between. There's also MiPix in the stairs, the handrails and incorporated into various other areas of the set. It is used as a versatile and literal visual building block supporting the high-impact design as well as in the traditional role of a video surface. Over 25,000 MiPix blocks are used in Onyx Hotel. They were purchased and supplied by XL Video Belgium, and can be custom built into any shape or size. On Onyx Hotel, the MiPix blocks come alive as giant saturated colour light sources, or receive the swirly, mesmeric graphics and playback content produced by Steve Fatone.

High and low resolution surfaces meet as the I-Mag appears on four hi res LED screens - three upstage that move, and a fourth fixed downstage. There are also two side screens fed by Barco R12 projectors which also receive I-Mag. The hi res screens are 10mm pitch, and contain integrated LEDs (all colours together in the one LED) so one pixel equals one LED.

The video package was co-ordinated by Blink TV, with most hardware supplied by XL Video Inc. for both the US and European tours. However, the tour is also a good illustration of how an international company like XL co-ordinates seamlessly between its different operations - the MiPix was bought and supplied by XL Belgium and the side screens and projectors for Europe were supplied by XL Video UK.

The side screens and the downstage LED screen are also used by Blink TV to run their pre-show and changeover programmes, and by the opening acts, which helps make their shows look fuller in terms of production. This tour, Blink runs three programmes of 45, 15 and 25 minutes, slotting in between the two support acts.

Onyx Hotel's live video director is Atlanta-based George Robbins, who joined tour in Chicago. He has four cameras: two with 55:1 lenses at FOH, a pedestal camera stage right in the pit and a hand-held on stage left. He mixes using a Ross Synergy 2 mixer/switcher, working in conjunction with a series of custom controls designed for each playback system.

The playback systems are six Mac G4 hard drives running time-coded video and Green X software, written by video maker Steve Fatone's company. This sets up a series of pre-cued sequences for playback and is triggered by MD Glendon Campbell running Pro Tools onstage. The most challenging part of the show for Robbins is its fast pace, which certainly keeps him and everyone else on their toes!

LIGHTING THE ZONE
Steve Cohen designed the lighting with Joel Young with whom he has worked for 12 years and shares a fluid creative dialogue. Cohen developed the initial design concepts with Tancharoen and Britney. He and Young checked out the MiPix at LDI 2003, after which he decided it would be the core of the design. With the show aesthetic video-driven, they devised the video format first and then turned to the lighting. With so much visual info already onstage, they decided to keep the lighting up high, with the vast majority rigged on a massive 56ft x 40ft mother grid, with some lower fixtures on 'drop' pipes. It's one of the most symmetrical rigs they've designed for some years, explained Young. This was again chosen to complimented the set layout.

Lighting equipment is supplied by a combination of Steve Cohen Productions and Fourth Phase, with trussing from Show Rigging, and rigging from Ocean State. Most of the production gear came from the US. With a lengthy European tour, even with transport added on, this proved a more cost-effective way of running the production, taking advantage of lower US rental prices. The other plus point was no re-prepping was necessary!

The fixture count is impressive. Sixty-four Coemar CF 1200s for the main rig lights, stowed up in the grid. Fifteen High End Studio Beam PCs are used for small, punchy floor lighting; 34 Martin MAC 2000 profiles are scattered across the rig and the floor, for high powered 'zapping' effects, and 16 3kW Synchrolites add more lumens to the equation.

The band are front lit with eight HES ColorCommands, located on the front two trusses. Cohen is also using 10 of the new Coemar Iflex Spots - with electronic ballasts, rampabale between 800 and 2000 Watts - and 10 iFlex Washes on the downstage truss, filling the forestage with front light. There's also 24 4-lite Moles with 5600ĽK FBE lamps, and four 2.5kW Lycian truss spots. The picture is completed with four FOH spots supplied at each venue.

Young is using a Martin Maxxyz console which he's finding very flexible and powerful. The consoles is appearing increasingly on large scale tours, especially those originating in the US. Young is particularly impressed with the console's effects generator; the ability to stop an effect mid-execution, and applying an end point to an effect with the facility to flip the orientation. As with video, the show's lighting is also full-on. The two media very much work together to paint a 'visual' picture, also collaborating with Britney, her band and dancers. It's a slickly produced, carefully punctuated multi-media extravaganza of sound, colour, movement and action. It'd be easy for one department or another to get lost in action, but clearly thought through, each element has it's place in a tightly layered show.

LARGER THAN LOUD
Sound engineer Monty Lee Wilkes has worked with Britney for nearly five years since the Ooops tour. She was impressed with the other female artists on his CV which include Bjork, the Sneaker Pimps and The Bangles' Suzanna Hoffs. After all that time years, she trusts him implicitly to look after her voice and the show live. "Ballsy and larger than life" is how he describes the sound he seeks to achieve, quickly qualifying that this does not mean loud and hurting! He stabilises at around 105dB.

It's a Crown-powered Showco Prism system, with everything supplied from the US apart from the racks and stacks which come from Audio Rent in Basle. Wilkes has a thoughtful, intelligent approach to the art of noise, and he's in no doubt that Prism is, "The finest concert PA system ever", and uses it wherever he can.

The system consists of 80 flown Prism cabinets and 20 subs on the floor, and they're using the new Clair/Lake Technologies I/O system, with wireless touch-pad, for system management. The PA is set up and optimised each day by systems engineer Jim Ragus, who's been out with Wilkes on every Britney tour to date.

He's resurrected the dbx 903 analogue compressors, once a standard component of the Prism system, "because they sound great", and these ones are specially hot rodded!

Wilkes mixes on a Yamaha PM1D console running in 96 channel mirror mode for hot backup. He makes full use of the desk's integral DSP and likes the mic pre-amps because they sound great to any PM4000 fan, and you can "feel them instantly". He also likes the speed at which you can work the desk. Having A/B'd the PM1D against many other consoles, he's confident it's the right creative tool for him.

There's a seven-piece band onstage, plus Britney, and despite the PM1D's plentiful automation facilities, Wilkes mixes the show manually rather than running it as a cued event. "It keeps my head in the show," said Wilkes, who clearly loves the buzz of mixing.

The mainstream media appeared to be obsessed with the periods of the show in which Britney was miming. It's hardly a new phenomenon for high energy shows of this kind, as Michael Jackson knows only too well. In the moments when she is 'on mic', her voice is described by Wilkes as "high, very sweet - almost angelic". She's been using a Crown 311 headset mic, and they've just taken delivery of a new Sabine 2.5 GHz wireless system. He actually tunes her mics with his voice during sound check, so knows exactly the right sound for Britney's voice based on how it sounds with his. He also reveals that she's a "real sweetheart" to work with.

Monitor engineer Blake Suib is on his first Britney tour and also has a PM1D onstage, using 112 inputs. They have a Sennheiser wireless system onstage and the band use a mix of Future Sonics and Ultimate Ears IEMs plus Clair 12AM wedges with ML18 subs.

Britney's monitors are flown Clair R4 and P2 cabinets. The only effects Suib uses is a touch of reverb on her vocals during the ballads. He also remarks that she's extremely easy to work and communicate with, and dedicated to producing the very best show.

Onyx Hotel's high production values make a polished, integrated touring performance of epic West End/Broadway musical proportions; there's a pleasant, friendly vibe among everyone, and it definitely earns respect as a definitive piece of pop drama.