[Rush and Ungerleider Turn Back Time]

Rush and the Time Machine Tour are featured in the October, 2010 issue of PLSN (Projection, Light and Staging News). Rush lighting director Howard Ungerleider is interviewed and discusses the Time Machine Tour stage show in detail including the steampunk design, the video features and the custom spider truss.

... "Once the band revealed that they wanted to do something in a Steampunk genre, I had to come up with a design for the system based on that concept. The more I researched the genre, the more possibilities I found to explore," Ungerleider says, noting the collaboration between himself, Weinrib and Heslip.

"They hired Dale Heslip as their backline stage designer and video art director. He came up with a very unique design that fit the theme. Then they let us get our hands on it and wire it up with lighting and cryogenics - items that allow steam to come out and make it glow during the course of the evening. We also put many video screens inside to send unique visual signals through. We brainstormed storylines and created our own footage, as always."

The entire backline was done in Steampunk finery, with Lifeson's Hughes & Kettner amplifiers and Peart's DMX-controlled crackle tubes melding with various CO2 steam portals and Lee's sausage-making machine.

In the spirit of Steampunk machinery, one of the biggest things Ungerleider brought to the table was a giant mechanical spider.

"In every Steampunk movie," Ungerleider notes, "there's always some bizarre piece of machinery - a flying machine that looks like a blimp or a huge moving structure. So I figured I'd make something that moves over the band. I created an articulating spider that actually morphs and changes during the show like a Transformer, and I loaded it with my favorite fixtures." ...

You can read the entire article at this link. Thanks to interceptor for the heads up.

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