Electric Lucifer is an “electric rock opera” that will be premiering January 9th-13th next year. It’s a collaborative project between living and dead artists, spearheaded by Jim Findlay who was first inspired by the music of Bruce Haack 20 years ago.
This odd yet exciting performance focuses on using the work of Haack and making its progressive and innovative sounds a visual piece. It’s something Findlay has been waiting to make for years, and has finally had an opportunity to do so in the past few. Creative Capital has been a resource for Findlay and his team, and has allowed them to be strategic in their planning.
When Findlay first encountered Haack’s record Electric Lucifer with his brother while working on a project 15 to 20 years ago. It’s an album that is very different from Haack’s work with children’s music, something much more experimental. At the time of its creation, Electric Lucifer was pushing the boundaries of sound, experimenting with analog synthesizers and his own innovations made from discarded electric devices. This method of pushing the boundaries of creation is something Findlay admires—so much so he has made that the attitude of the work behind the electric opera.
“Here’s a guy who’s always like, ‘What happens if I put these two things together?’“ Findlay explains. Being creative is essential to both himself and Haack.
The record itself has other elements that are integral to what makes the music so interesting, as it delves into questions of suffering, punishment, and what makes something redeemable. It begs the question, what power has the ability to redeem the worst of us? Who is the worst of us? These ideas make Findlay consider the worst of our society, and how we treat those people we judge to be the worst.
Lucifer, then, is a central character in Electric Lucifer, though despite the biblical implications, Findlay focuses on the pagan ideas that unify most religions in general. Not only that, there are elements that Haack has created for himself that Findlay and his team will need to symbolize. “We have to represent a war in heaven, a war between 7,400,000 angels, and God and the archangels. We have to represent a whole new species of creatures that Bruce imagined called “silverheads” which are sort of like quasi-devils that mated with humans to become cyborgians. There’s a lot of work to do.”
It’s a new type of performance that appears to be attempting to give audiences of all types a way of encountering novelty. Findlay hopes to bring the performances to stadiums and grand spaces of the like, as Electric Lucifer is something that demands room for the imagination.
To read more about Electric Lucifer, Jim Findlay, and Bruce Haack, check out Creative Capital’s article on the project here.
