Looking for the ultimate in strobe lighting effects? This new system from Optikinetics will leave a massive hole in your pocket but a lasting effect on a crowd.

Of all the lighting effects available to clubs, theatres and gigging musicians, the strobe is probably the best known - and, often, the most dramatic. Despite the essential simplicity of the technology, the high-intensity bursts of white light produced by a strobe have a sensory impact which is quite unique. No matter how many intelligent 'robot' lights your rig boasts, and no matter how many MIDI- and DMX-programmable channels of control your desk provides, nothing can really match the effect of a strobe firing on overdrive. Set your unit to flash on the beat of a four-on-the-floor kick, and you throw an instant charge into the crowd.

However, the visual assault of a powerful, repeated xenon flash needs to be used sparingly and with care if it is to have a positive effect on an audience. Indeed, the average strobe unit must remain unused for a large part of the night, simply because the same effect that whips people into a frenzy is also capable of becoming seriously tedious, if not downright harmful.

Clearly, the strobe effect, precisely because it is so dramatic, has its limitations. Or does it?

Optikinetics think not, and have released the Club Strobeflower system to prove it. Based around a proprietary short-arc design of xenon flashtube, the Club Strobeflower lamp is designed very differently from those seen in most strobe units in most clubs. Here the light produced is focused internally through a convex lens, giving a much higher usable projection distance. The name itself reveals how Optikinetics have actually fused two popular types of lighting technology to create their new effect; 'flower' refers to the multiple pin-beams of light this unit produces, rather like standard moon flower lanterns.

The actual lamp housing is fan-cooled, measures 300 x 206 x 200mm, and weighs in at 8.5kg - reassuringly solid and sturdy enough to survive the roughest of gigs. Sockets are provided for External Control In and Thru (to chain further Strobeflowers from one lantern) and control of any proprietary accessory you wish to clip to the front of the unit (such as a colour changer).

Up to sixteen Strobeflower lanterns can be used with one Strobeflower Controller, which is the brain behind the whole system. It's housed in a 19", 2U rackmounting unit and hooked up to the lanterns via dedicated interface wires terminated in 1/4" stereo jacks - the lanterns being arranged into four control 'channels'.

The front panel offers you two basic areas of control over the action of the Strobeflowers - the way in which the actual beam of light revolves, and the way in which the lamp flashes. The first of these functions is relatively simple; you can choose the beam of light to revolve continuously at a fixed speed, to revolve in alternating directions according to the bass beat of an audio input (ideally taken from the output of your bass bin amp), or to 'park' in one position. The lanterns can also be shut off completely by depressing the 'blackout' button.

On the lamp side of things, the Controller offers three basic flash effects. 'Full' leaves the lamp switched on continuously, producing a sharp pattern of medium-intensity white light similar to normal flower or robot units; 'Burst' produces a rapidly-flickering beam of light that generates more movement in the pattern without resorting to a normal high-intensity strobe effect; and 'Single' emulates the classic strobe pattern of short bursts of severe light. The speed of this last effect is regulated by a rotary control labelled... well, 'Speed'. Logical, innit?

The last, and probably most impressive, feature of the Controller is the ability to organise the four control channels which the lamps appear on into one of four patterns. These take the form of rudimentary chase effects, switching lamps on and off in sequence according to the speed set on the rotary control, or the audio bass beat. The four variations seem initially rather simplistic and unsophisticated - until you remember that you're not chasing standard Parcans here, you're chasing strobes. By setting up four Strobeflowers around your stage or audience, and having their rotating patterns or single flashes synchronised singly (or in pairs, or all together) to a thundering kick drum, you create an absolutely staggering effect - quite unlike anything you've ever experienced with normal strobe lighting.

I set up a system similar to this at a recent club night, with one Strobeflower covering each corner of the floor. I can honestly say that the reaction from the crowd could be heard as well as seen when the Strobeflowers kicked in and started to do their stuff. With all other coloured lighting dimmed and plenty of smoke, the real intensity of the beams was revealed; having a xenon tube as your light source is one of the things that raises the Strobeflower system head and shoulders above bog-standard moon effects. You can literally light up entire buildings with one of these things. More importantly, the effect is one that can be left running, if properly programmed. Obviously, no lighting effect should be used to excess, but with the Strobeflower system you at least don't have to worry about it getting too much.

In fact, my only reservation with the system concerned the physical design of the controller buttons which were rather 'clunky' and a little too small for punching rapidly between the various effects and patterns - should you opt to follow that method of control. The ideal thing here would have been a touch-sensitive control panel, but this is really perfectionism on my part. Of course, the price of the Strobeflower system may seem high compared to normal strobe units - but then these aren't normal strobe units. Optikinetics have enhanced the flexibility and creativity of strobe lighting a hundred-fold. If ever proof was needed that crowds notice the quality of a lightshow, this is it.

THE LAST WORD