Cathcart lights Silversun with Chauvet DJ
- Details
This sums up what happened late last year when Cathcart envisioned expanding the look of his show to better reflect the free-flowing sound of Silversun Pickups. Understanding Cathcart’s inspiration as they did, his contacts at Upstaging recommended the COLORband PiX from CHAUVET DJ.
“I have been working with Silversun off and on since 2016,” said Cathcart, owner of Bigtime Lighting Design. “The album cycle started June of 2019 with a very minimal floor package, consisting of strobes and small movers. For the new year, I wanted to create a wall of light to close the gap between the floor package and the local production. Silversun’s music has a lot of dynamics with a lot of rhythmic underlying synth that I wanted to capture with the use of LED pixels.”
This goal led Cathcart to the COLORband PiX. “Given what I wanted to accomplish, I went straight to this fixture,” he said. “We took off the trunnions, and replaced them with eye bolts. Then we added in a few bits of aircraft cable, half-couplers, as well as some carabiners and straps - and presto, we had a wall of light.”
Cathcart arranged 28 COLORband PiX fixtures in seven columns of equal height. Pixel mapping the fixtures, each of which have 12 cells, he was able to create a constant stream of unique and very varied looks supporting Silversun Pickups multi-faceted music, which moves from sweetly soft to screeching loud in the blink of an eye.
Unfortunately, Silversun Pickup’s 2020 tour was cut short, after the band’s 12 March show in Atlanta due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
