Brompton Technology Powers Radiohead’s fully live, in-the-round European tour

When Radiohead returned to touring in 2025, the band set out to challenge the conventions of arena production. Rather than build the show around fixed content and pre-planned cues, the creative team designed a fully in-the-round stage where video responded to the performance in real time, night after night. With more than 70 songs in rotation and setlists frequently confirmed only shortly before doors, the production needed a video system capable of total flexibility without sacrificing stability. Long-time collaborator Universal Pixels, drawing on eight years of work with the band, was brought in as video partner, with Brompton Technology’s Tessera processing and distribution forming the backbone of the LED system.

Under new creative lead Sean Evans, the show was built around an unbroken, 360-degree connection between the band and the audience. Video Director Ellie Clement, Lighting Designer Pryderi Baskerville, and technical systems specialist Jeremy Lloyd of Wonderworks worked together to strip out anything that could interrupt the sightlines, which meant doing away with conventional camera platforms altogether.

That decision created a significant technical challenge. Every camera had to operate remotely from within the stage footprint itself, while the design still called for more than 20 camera feeds to be displayed simultaneously across a set of LED surfaces that were themselves in constant motion. On top of this, the system had to support fully live content generation, quick changes between visual looks, several different screen mappings, complete redundancy, and manual cueing throughout, with no timecode to fall back on.

A production built entirely around live, unrepeatable performance placed specific demands on the processing layer. The following Brompton Tessera features were central to keeping the system stable, synchronised and visually consistent across the tour:

• Full Redundancy: Configured the Tessera SX40 outputs in redundant pairs with closed loop redundancy, so that if a primary feed ever failed, the backup instantly took over within a single frame. Processor redundancy enabled further security, keeping the show’s visuals running without interruption.

• Stacking: Used during setup to control the multiple Tessera SX40 processors driving the 12-sided cylindrical structure as a single system, streamlining configuration across a rig with this many independently moving surfaces ahead of each show.

• Dynamic Calibration: Maintained consistent colour and brightness across the curved, multi-panel LED structure, keeping visuals uniform night after night. This was paired with Brompton’s PureTone technology, which profiled each panel type to correct colour non-linearities, delivering true, accurate colour and neutral greys at every brightness level.

• ThermaCal: Configured during setup to compensate for thermal drift typical of transparent panels, helping the screens hold consistent colour and brightness through long, high-output touring performances across 20 dates.

Operating every camera remotely, entirely within the stage footprint, was one of the production’s defining challenges, and it placed extra demands on the video system to handle more than 20 live camera inputs across independently moving screens without a fixed structure to rely on. Multiple screen mappings had to be supported as the LED surfaces rose and reconfigured for each song, while the show’s total dependence on manual cueing, rather than timecode, meant the system needed to be instantly responsive throughout. Complete redundancy was non-negotiable given the scale and unpredictability of the production, which the fully segmented, VLAN-based network was designed to guarantee.

The result was a fully live, in-the-round video experience that evolved uniquely every night of the tour. Rather than acting as a pre-programmed backdrop, video became an expressive, responsive part of the performance itself, moving in step with the band rather than to a fixed script. For Universal Pixels, delivering the show meant assembling one of the most complex system builds the company has undertaken, supported by a touring crew of 10 specialists across LED, cameras, systems engineering and control, working through a shared communications system to coordinate rapidly across video, lighting, rigging and stage management. Ultimately, the production showed how carefully engineered technical infrastructure, with Brompton processing at its core, can remove constraints rather than impose them, giving creative ambition the room it needs to thrive.

**Image Credit: Universal Pixels