Will Thomas Powers Natural Forces of Bonobo’s Fragments Tour With ChamSys

LOS ANGELES – The Bonobo show at Prague’s Forum Karlin was like every other show on the star’s widely acclaimed Fragments tour. In other words, it was unlike any other show by the multi-Grammy nominated electronic musician as he crisscrosses the globe on his groundbreaking tour.

Running two-to-three hours, depending on the flow of the artist’s inspiration, each Bonobo Fragments tour show is a unique creative entity on to itself, immersing audiences in the vast, transcendent world of this British-born and LA-base artist’s imagination.

The one thing that is consistent about each show on the tour is that it will transform audiences to places that lay beyond ordinary expectations. In the words of one Czech critic who wrote about the performance at Forum Karlin, “Bonobo created a dreamy and enlightened environment, where space and time became just a mere convention.”

Contributing to this magical effect as it reflects the beautifully nuanced music of Bonobo, is a colorful and richly textured lightshow designed and run by Will Thomas on his ChamSys MagicQ MQ500M Stadium supplied by Colour Sound Experiment with backup from his trusty MagicQ MQ60 console (a rugged desk that has been all over the world with the intrepid LD, and even survived a sandstorm in Africa!)

“In a sense, the Fragments tour grew out of the COVID pandemic when Simon Green (Bonobo) was unable to tour,” said Will. “It was during this period that Simon spent a great deal of time ‘out in the wilderness,’ so to speak. He was there connecting to nature, and decompressing. This experience infuses itself into the music of Fragments, which has this beautiful undertone of nature. Of course, this natural spirit is also very much reflected in the tour’s stage production.”


Thomas celebrates this connective natural spirit through lighting. His distinctive light angles reflect the ebb and flow of nature, along with its infinite vastness, whilst his nuanced color changes, flowing seamlessly through warm and cool palettes, evoke feelings associated with the seasons, the sky and the changing tides.

“There’s a lot of nature in our show,” said Will. “It’s a very live experience, what you see one night you might not see the other. With my ChamSys, it’s easy to get the colors and shapes I want as I busk. The desk is intuitive and logical, which makes everything much easier. I value simplicity. I want to control everything with ten fingers, without giving up programming power. I can do that with ChamSys.”

He had particular praise for what he described as “the musicality in the faders” of his MagicQ MQ500M, noting that the “constant improvements in the feel of the hardware give the lighting operator a real sense of playing with the band.”

“The MQ500M now feels as solid and creative an instrument as the drums and keyboards used by the band,” Will elaborated. “Thanks to the almost infinite configurability of the hardware, I am able to use the dual theatre playback faders as old school flash level masters.

“When all is said and done, the constant improvements from ChamSys in the MagicQ software and open and sharing attitude of the community of desk users results in a constant flow of valuable new features,” said Will. “For example, features like the console’s moving faders provide the LD with quick access to things like Intensity Masters, a great feature and one that I will certainly be using in the future.“