You may not know it, but if you’re a regular concertgoer in Toronto there’s a good chance you’ve attended a General Chaos light show.
Though Steven Lindsey doesn’t fit the typical scenester mould (unless mullets suddenly come back into style), he’s had an intimate, interweaving connection to the Toronto music scene for over a decade.
Along with the occasional help of his partner Eric Siegerman, the Manchurian Mancunian transplant has been supplying his rich psychedelic visuals to the Wavelength music series under the General Chaos name for the last 11 years. He’s also a regular fixture at the Ambient Ping series, Optical Sounds parties and the Sadies’ annual New Year’s residency at the Horseshoe. Yet very few people know the man behind the projector.
If all goes well, that should change soon. This Saturday at Toronto Underground Cinema, General Chaos will screen his new film, Luminaries, as part of the Images Festival. An audio-visual collaboration with musician Jamie Todd, the project digitizes his analog illumination style and adapts it for the big screen.
Curious about the enigmatic artist, we tracked Lindsey down to his home studio, a basement workshop in his St. Clair West home. There, under framed concert posters and NOW covers featuring the Sadies, lies a mess of homemade gels, mangled and modified dime-store slide projectors, and piles upon piles of prisms, shields and filters. “Really high tech stuff,” he quips.
It may not look like much piled in his basement, but it’s the culmination of years of collection and experimentation. Inspired by the live shows of his favourite band Hawkwind, the Lindsey decided to try his hand at some light art. The native Brit purchased his first slide projector for $10 at a warehouse sale put on by a Toronto software company (he works a day job as a computer programmer). His collection grew steadily as he tried out new techniques.
“They were huge productions, the early shows,” says Lindsey. “It had all this wiring and cables going everywhere. It’s still a lot of gear, but back then it was at least three times as much.”
He eventually settled as the house artist for Wavelength as a way to avoid lugging his equipment back and forth from venue to venue. Though he originally envisioned his visuals as accompaniment for space rock bands, Wavelength’s anything-goes programming mentality led him to adapt his style to everything from country to metal to punk.
“I was just amazed everyone let me do it,” he relates. “I’ve always asked first if bands want the light show, and only once in the history of Wavelength has anyone ever said no. I can’t make anybody sound any better, but I always say the only thing better than a great band live is a great band live with a great light show.”
Eventually, Wavelength led him to Rick White’s Elevator, which led him to the Sadies, and soon enough General Chaos became Toronto’s most steady accidental musical institution.
“There were periods when I’d be doing Wavelength on Sundays, the Ping on Tuesdays, and then another gig on some other day of the week,” he recounts. “I was having a terrible breakdown in my marriage, and it kind of got me through. It gave me something to look forward to each week.”
In a way, Luminaries is a culmination of everything he’s learned over the last 11 years. Though it uses some of the advantages of film, the project stays true to his analog/DIY roots. Rather than abandon his hand-crafted techniques, it instead uses the medium to apply many of his tricks at once.
“I did what I usually do at a show, but then I combined different takes and different sections,” he explains. “There’s overlaying, and I tweak the contrast maybe, but there’s no real digital editing. Everything you see was projected onto a 12 foot wall at my old flat, and it all happened in real time.”
You can catch Luminaries at Toronto Underground Cinema this Saturday, April 9 at 8 pm. Afterwards, experimental Toronto hardcore band Fucked Up provides an original live score to the 1928 film, West of Zanzibar.
