On April 25, Q Nightclub laid their wildly successful Kingdom Saturdays weekly to bed in order to make room for a new concept. Kingdom had a spectacular run, starting at the Social in August 2012 before finding its home at Q after the Social's closure. Since its very first night, Kingdom was at capacity every single week for three years. But why kill off such a popular party? "As an artist of any kind, we have a vision to respect," says Q's creative director, Sean Majors. "There’s a time and a place to recognize that. Although it still might be a viable project, if your heart’s not in it, then it’s probably a great place to move on to whatever inspires you next."

As Majors hit the drawing board, he had much to consider. He knew he wanted to push the boundaries for what a Saturday night at Q could look like in big new ways, and he also wanted to bring something to the table that was true to his heart. "I consider myself, more than anything else, a member of the house music underground culture of Seattle," Majors says, "and I carry that with me to everything that I do in other communities and other venues. That’s something that I really try to have translate over to all the events that we have at Q. The most obvious one being the Studio 4/4 concept, which is right in line with my history and my own taste. But the idea of the general tenets of community and respecting each other, respecting each other’s personal space, respecting everyone’s right to express themselves as they see fit, respecting every person that comes through the door equally—all of that kind of stuff is so deeply embedded in the house music culture of Seattle and house music culture in general that I’ve kind of got that engrained as my own little personal outlook on all of it. That’s the basis of all of it, and then from there it’s what’s inspiring."

With all of that swimming in his mind, Majors developed the idea for Madness, which promises to be a completely unique nightclub concept unlike anything this city has seen before. "To a certain degree I feel like the conversation has gotten stale, Majors says, "and I feel like there’s a place for us to be able to build some excitement and to try some new things that to my knowledge haven’t been done and certainly haven’t been pursued in the way that we’re going to do them, at least in the NW."

"How can we occupy a space in the NW that is on the most lush fields end of the spectrum in nightlife and what would that be like?" Majors pondered. "That question pushed us to this idea of a very performance based, almost Cirque du Soleil approach that was significantly beyond even what we had already done with Kingdom."

"One of the things that we wanted to get into was to be able to create a digital environment," Majors explains. "We’ve purchased three more projectors, for a total of five, in the room which now can map around the room and create a digital environment that can, at the push of a button, change from outer space to underwater to rolling hills to snow fall. You can have this sort of internal canvas that can change from one thing to another really quickly and in a much less cumbersome way than we’ve done with set design and decor options with other parties."

"The name gave us the freedom to have a huge spectrum of emotion, of characters, of performance, of music and art and every single contributing factor all in the same specific experience," Majors continues. "On any given night, you could have things that on one end are all very dreamlike and ethereal and spoke to inspiration and beauty and those kind of feelings, and on the other end were darker or sinister or more sexual or more creepy or funnier or whatever. There is a huge range of artistic emotion and art that can be contributed in one single vision—it doesn’t need to be a theme night. It doesn’t need to be a specific thing, it can all be part of one larger hallucination."

Beyond attempting to push the envelope in terms of the aesthetic and visual experience of the night, Majors has implemented a model that is unique and unexpected. "Rather than having Saturdays be hyper focused on the DJ," Majors explains, "we’re going to turn the approach a bit on its head and have the people that design spaces in clubs or at Burning Man camps or in festivals or in different creative environments become guest directors on weekends. Rather than a DJ being the featured draw, the draw is now going to be the director and the goal is to have that director work with the creative team at Q to establish what they’re going to do in terms of decor and design and projection and lighting and music and all of the different elements that contribute to the experience—turn it into one cohesive expression of their own madness."

Of course, there will still be music to enjoy. If dancing is your thing, guests of Madness can expect a continuation of much of the music that's historically been found at Q on the weekends. As Majors puts it, expect "a blending of the underground sounds of future bass and house meeting with some of the sounds that are more associated with Kingdom and being open format EDM." The resident DJs are recognizable players in the local dance scene, but have all taken on alter egos and are performing under pseudonyms for Madness. Expect quality music, but from week to week the performer behind the decks will remain a mystery.

Upcoming DJs coming through Madness over the next month include Shiba San (May 23), Jody Wisternoff, Martin Roth, and Lenno, but Majors is quick to remind us that the DJs are not the focus. "The goal is to be moving away from headliner-heavy booking," he says. "We’re going to settle into a very guest art director centric approach. That’s the real energy of it."

Over the weeks ahead, Noah Makins, Kitty Kitty Bang Bang, and Rita Savoie will take the reigns as guest director and give guests a peek into the madness of their own minds.