[divider]Getting Out of a Music-Dimensional Night[/divider]
Most every (if not all) club nights throughout the country follow a simple formula: Run with a theme usually based in a sub-genre, book a DJ or a small lineup of DJs, and design everything else around that. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, and by and large it’s proved to be massively successful as clubs have grown and expanded. But at a point, things will reach a level of saturation if they haven’t already. That’s true for our local scene, and it’s true for clubs everywhere across the globe.
[pullquote align=”right”]”There’s a lack of imagination and creativity, and everything’s predicated on the same repeating DJ cycle and the same ‘worship the DJ’ culture. The culture of nightlife has room to grow past just being a music-dimensional thing.”[/pullquote]
It’s not based in a lack of respect for talented DJs, and certainly not in an unwillingness to have them perform. What it’s more about is seeing the club night formula, and asking one question: How can we do better? Madness seeks to be the answer to that question, in deemphasizing the “who’s DJing tonight?” question, and changing that to “what will it be like at Q this week?” There’s an air of unpredictability that takes hold, that really makes you wonder what the night will have in store past simply the music.
So what is Madness? The short version: Every week, Q will be tagging a new guest “Conductor” that will act as the curator for the night. This person will be “responsible for working with DJs weeks before, the projectionist, and designing the performers’ costumes. Rather than just the DJ part of it, they’re going to be multimedia. They’re going to be our headliner.” To allow for this, they’ve repainted the walls with an aluminum composite to make them more reflective, and installed three brand new HD projectors (on top of the three they already have), creating an immersive digital environment. As for the conductors themselves? They won’t just be anybody.
“We want to pull these people that are responsible for designing TomorrowWorld and EDC, these people that design performers and costumes and stages, the people that are the visionaries creating this digital landscape, and ask them ‘what do you want to pull out of people in a nightclub?’”
From what we saw last weekend, we can say with complete and utter certainty that they accomplished this to a tee. Actors and performers roamed the crowd, while all the cues were synced up meticulously to the music, video, performances, and visuals. The feeling we got in the room was that having a conversation with your friends was not only doable, but encouraged. Theatrical interludes had the room transfixed as they cropped up throughout the night. In all, it was nothing like any club night we’ve ever experienced.
Important things happen in Pacific Northwest nightlife, and DMNW will send you alerts!
Pop culture junkie, dinosaur enthusiast, and proud Managing Editor. While an avowed basshead, has been known to be ever-so-slightly trance-curious under the right circumstances.
