The Swedish House Mafia reunion at Ultra Music Festival was probably the most anticipated set and the trio delivered a great performance but anyone there that night or watching the live stream must have wondered where the stage production was.
Even though Swedish House Mafia had a great atmosphere going, lights and visuals were underwhelming and the world certainly expected more from their epic reunion. The lack of stage production most likely wasn’t by design and Reddit users are speculating what went wrong on the technical side that night.
A stage production guy posted his guess on Reddit, opening up the possibility of a file issue being the cause of a lackluster show. Several things including the LED video panels, LED bars, strobes, and moving heads that Swedish House Mafia brought for their set should have been working but the stage was almost completely dark, in addition to poorly synced lighting cues.
The specific technical components that weren’t working were clues to what the issue was, but what pointed the Reddit user to file issues rather than data signal issues was the lack of dynamic effects from the moving heads. While the rest of the festival was moving, the heads remained static, which shows they were turned on but not doing what they were programmed to do. The light show was probably re-programmed last minute, meaning files were corrupted or lost.
Some Reddit users commented that the minimalistic stage production was intentional but other Reddit users working in stage production chimed in on the issue, pointing out lights and strobes were brought in and not turned on. While these are all speculations, one thing that can be confirmed is Swedish House Mafia put on an amazing performance. It is unfortunate that the production wasn’t at full potential for a historic set but the crowd had a night to remember even without special visuals.
Check out the Reddit thread here.