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| HISTORY |
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ICFTHS/THEN
Sea at the Edge of Town:
The Hanbury Ballroom 2003-2004
Once upon a time (14/02/03), D.A.I.S.Y. the deejay peecee (assisted by wannabe artists and puny human slaves Nikon Driver & kicking_k) launched It Came from the Sea, an experimental disco that spliced arthouse visuals with a slavishly fashionable dancefloor agenda. Cue 2 years of: dogbowls full of sweets, skull-and-crossbones balloons, underwater movies, a bubble machine, a smoke machine, masses of artificial flowers, computer-generated cartoons, indoor graffiti, amateur paparazzi, and a room full of self-confessed pretentious freaks. On a good night, it was somewhere between an artschool happening and the decline & fall of the Roman Empire. On a bad night, it was EVEN WORSE.
The music policy started as: ‘experimental D.I.S.C.O. feat. electro pop crossover hip-hop lo-fi sleaze mp3s cut + paste fashion hype blah blah blah rock ACTION’ – later downsized and streamlined to the more manageable ‘hip-hop fashion pop electro sleaze rock action’ – though they’ve continued sending exploratory tentacles into various genres as they emerge – from grime to reggaeton – anything goes so long as it’s song-based and makes you move whether you know the words or not. The one given is that the boyz strive for the fastest-evolving dancefloor in town – not only is most of the music played at the club unreleased on the night, but they routinely premiere a third new material each month.
During this period, they filled support slots for Chaos Rocks at the C2, Pink Grease at the Po-na-na, a free tour of Brighton’s pubs, and a residency at the Electric Sessions (a monthly live electronic music showcase), as well as an invasion of swanky superclub Audio (reinforced by hundreds of plastic soldiers skirmishing around the venue). Elsewhere, their avant-garde social club, Lo-Res provided a monthly celebration of DIY culture, involving free zines, multiple artworks, local bands, and exclusive film screenings – culminating in the Post-Everything exhibition at the Permanent Gallery, Aug/Sept ’04 (‘A discourse on our inability to find a viable name for the era in which we live, this exhibition…is the mother of all hangovers’ – The Guardian). In August 2004, It Came from the Sea rocked the Ballroom for the last time, putting the fun back in funeral with hundreds of glowsticks and a goodbye speech from D.A.I.S.Y. the deejay peecee.
Sea City Central:
The Sussex Arts Club 2005-2006
It returned from exile at the Sussex Arts Club, with a complete revamp, the first weekend of February 2005 – and has sold out (and then some) every month since. Adding a smoke machine to an arsenal of heavenly lights, the ballroom increasingly took on the mantle of a psychedelic event (so much so that they have been known to set off the Hotel’s fire alarm in their enthusiasm). Green Day attended the relaunch, surreally and there are reports a ‘contemporary dance spectacular’ was staged (and filmed) somewhere on the premises.It returned from exile at the Sussex Arts Club, with a complete revamp, the first weekend of February 2005 – and has sold out (and then some) every month since. Adding a smoke machine to an arsenal of heavenly lights, the ballroom increasingly took on the mantle of a psychedelic event (so much so that they have been known to set off the Hotel’s fire alarm in their enthusiasm).
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For fresh updates and things to look forward to, click to the news. |
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| PRESS |
| Jan 2006 |
Latest 7 - Best Club Night Of 2005 |
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New Years Eve (Slight Return) - There are millions of New Year's Eve stories in the naked city, and this is just one of them...The Good folks at It Came From The Sea are holding their own NYE effort a full week into 2006. For a nominal entrance fee you get all the bleeding edge electro rock and roll goodness you expect from the best club night of 2005, with some extra tasty NYE trimmings including (party) poppers and an old school style countdown to, er, the first Sunday of 2006. It's a fitting effort from an alternative clubbing brand that's been spending the whole of last year giving traditional indie disco a much needed kick up the arse. |
| Sept 2004 |
NME - Brighton Student Guide |
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The coolest night at the city's coolest club playing the coolest music before it was even cool. Did we mention it was cool? |
| Oct 2006 |
What's On - Recommended Club |
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Already one of the most popular club nights in Brighton. ICFTHS's mixture of experimental disco and DIY finally has the venue it deserves. Now with smoke machines, a strict all-new music policy and specially commissioned artwork. The Guardian's favourite club night offers an exciting Friday the Thirteenth launch with free gifts for the first hundred people. |
| Oct 2006 |
Latest 7 - Raving Not Drowning |
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Once home to rather polite comedy nights and above average nibbles, the Komedia is preparing to rawk to the strains of Brighton's dirtiest deviant disco club night, it came from the sea.
DJ's kicking_k and Nikon Driver will be dragging their indie/no wave/hip-hop hard drive and bleeding edge visuals to kick off their inaugral night this friday.
According to the blurb "On a good night, it's somewhere between an art school happening and the decline and fall of the Roman Empire." Couldn't have put it better myself. |
| Oct 2006 |
The Source - Club Preview |
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It Came From The Sea have been holding out for this move for months now, after realising the volume limiter disappointments of Sussex Arts Club were stopping their party from really banging. Following a brief stop off at B'Lo, they're ready to settle into a permanent home that will run alongside their Guardian Guide-acknowledged London do. Apparently - it wasn't open at the time we went to press - the new Komedia is massive downstairs, with room for plenty of newcomers. So what can they expect? Certainly one of the quirkiest nights, with an LED display of talking points and dog bowls full of sweets, yet with a serious music policy that adds leftfield pop to the electro and indie mix, always moving swiftly, resolutely forwards. |
| Aug 2006 |
Flavorpill - London Club Pick |
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It Came From The Sea actually comes from Brighton (close enough?), bringing a new style of night that has been shaking dance floors on the coast since 2003. Bringing some of their fresh ocean breeze to London nightlife, the DIY and mp3-addict DJs in charge operate under a no-requests, no-guest DJs (let's keep the quality control high), and new music-only policy — which usually means music from any imaginable genre, with the common trait of being seemingly snatched from the future |
| July 2006 |
Time Out - Marine Adventures |
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A new clubnight, It Came From The Sea, launches at Dalston's Bardens Boudoir on Saturday. Co-promoter kicking_k tells us what's in store.
Simone Baird: Brief outline of It Came from the Sea: where did it really come
from and when?
kicking_k: The club was founded in 2003 by Nikon Driver & kicking_k – we'd been putting on art exhibitions in the north to audience of approximately each other and decided it was time to head some place where we could sucker moneyed types into supporting our secondhand book habit.
Brighton was the obvious place, and once we'd made our name (mobile disco tours of local pubs and DIY nights with free zines and specially-commissioned beermats) and settled into a central venue our wild dreams of a moderate income were fulfilled. We also got to meet lots of total freaks at totally freaky afterparties, forget what daylight looked like, played support slots for the likes of LCD
Soundsystem, Lady Sovereign and Optimo aaaaaaaand simultaneously had a
morose exhibition about 'the emptiness of pleasure' featured in the national press.
Simone Baird: Who is behind the club and what do they do?
kicking_k: kicking_k (who spews out all the promo blah) is also a writer/editor for Plan B magazine (www.planbmag.com) but secretly wants to be a playwright. Nikon Driver (who handles the visuals) is an artist/designer who has just hooked up with legendary French label ZE Records to design the promo for a music festival to be held in Brasil 2007. Casper C joins the team for London shows, and can usually be found promoting Baile Funk shows or playing on arcade games. None of them do requests.
Simone Baird: Why are you coming to London? Brighton's not big enough for you?
kicking_k: I guess we just thought it was the next logical thing to do. It's not far away, there's more street crime, commuting is hellish and *apparently* the streets are paved with gold. Also, the media love London and doing something there gives us a much better chance of getting the attention we crave (hello!)
Simone Baird: Take us through an 'average' Sea night.
kicking_k: First, we advise some form of self-medication – even if only prayer, or caffeine – in the comfort of your own (or someone else's) bedroom. Dress as the person you always wanted to be, or your parents warned you about, or just randomize or remix yourself, it's all good.
Get laughed at in the street. Inflict psychic revenge in own head, giggle a bit.
Enter club. Witness a room full of industrial-strength smoke and lights, wander blindly to bar, purchase refreshment, sit at table and graze toward a sugar rush from thoughtfully-provided dogbowls full of sweets.
Spend rest of night dancing to music you have never heard before, that shifts genre every other song, and employing the suggested topics of conversation scrolling past the dancefloor on an LED screen with other self-made superstars.
Go home vowing to change your life as of tomorrow.
Simone Baird: How is your club different?
kicking_k: We've never ever had a guest DJ. We don't trust them. We are paranoid control freaks and we want to be in charge of every single aspect of the happening.
We do have guest artists that make us nice things which we mass-produce and give away free.
Indie discos used to be places you could hear experimental music, new stuff, songs that broke the rules. We call It Came From The Sea an 'experimental disco' 'cause we run a new music only policy – on any given night a third of the stuff we play is making its debut. Even we don't know what's going to work (or not). This isn't about nostalgia, knowing all the words, going through the motions.
There's something about the first time you hear a new song – that uncertainty, the feeling of doing something you haven't before. We try to throw curve balls and surprise the dancefloor, we shift genres every other song – we don't make it easy for ourselves.
Simone Baird: Will you be giving out/selling postcards? Are they Brighton artists?
kicking_k: Yeah – there'll be free postcards from Brighton artists – and an appeal on the back for London artists to get involved and help us give this version of the night its own character.
Simone Baird: The NME described you as "the coolest night playing the coolest music before it was even cool." Did your mum cry with happiness?
kicking_k: I hate to say it, but my mum didn't even know what TIME OUT was, let alone the NME. Still, she's dead now. That'll learn her.
Simone Baird: Are you getting any fashion stalkers?
kicking_k: More a zombie army, really. Can't complain.
Simone Baird: Just how appalling is the appalling depravity you've promised to inflict on the capital? Explain...
kicking_k: To be fair, we can only do so much. Oh, sure, we'll dose you up on sweets, blitz your hearts with music from the future, blind you with near-psychedelic smoke & lights and brainwash you with LED subtexts but fundamentally it's the audiences job to spend the first half of the night discussing Kubrick and the latter part trying to eat each other's faces (or faeces) to the beat.
We hear that shouldn't be a problem in quaint little London town… |
| June 2006 |
New Currents - Profile |
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The latesttwist in the performance art soap opera that is Brighton's
most 'eventful' night sees It Came from the Sea leave the Sussex Arts
Club (where they've played to full houses all year) for West Street's
intense cellar space B'Lo. A tyrannical limiter over at the Arts Club
had seen a progressive dip in volume, and before a major relaunch in a
'bigger, more central venue' come October, they're spending the Summer
"maxxxing out the volume and giving you music you can feel (like, in
yr bones and hollow cavities)." With the night franchising a high
profile sister night in London come July, these (quite literally)
underground shows will be your best shot to get up-close-and-personal
with their trademark 'experimental disco' for some time. Expect
maximalist gimmicks from dogbowls of sweets, hazard tape, suggested
topics of conversation on a scrolling LED, artschool slideshows and
every last incoming musical trend assimilated and fed back to the
fastest-evolving crowd in town. |
| Feb 2006 |
The Source - It Came From The Sea: Cubed |
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For all the famed musical diversity of Brighton clubland, most nights are in fact remarkably similar in terms of what they offer - and it often doesn't go much beyond a couple of Dj's, a dancefloor and a bar. But kicking_k and Nikon Driver - as they're known to their mums - realised long ago that this wasn't good enough, so they added bowls of sweets and even colouring books and jigsaws to the mix. And lo and behold, three years later, they're more popular than ever! Admittedly, it might also have something to do with the fact that the projections are ace and the music they play is so cool that their record boxes can be opened only by blowtorch, and that in their short history they've hosted a ridiculous number of huge names. But who cares? The important thing is that they know how to throw a party - so this third birthday bash is set to be a corker. |
| Feb 2006 |
Latest 7 - Soundbite |
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Innovative sounds for the South Coast. |
| Sept 2005 + Jan 2006 |
New Currents - No1 Club Night |
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Fusing tripped-out visuals with a stack of first class experimental tracks, ICFTS has become something of a cult legend nationwide, playing "the coolest music before it's even cool". |
| July 2005 |
Latest 7 - Preview |
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Modest as ever, the genre-bending twosome, Nikon Driver and kicking_k, are advising their acolytes to 'get down early to see what happens when style meets substance', and the infamously glamourous and freaky DIY-style clientele that frequent their events shouldn't need telling twice. Here's your chance to 'catch future music now' in its unnatural habitat - more dry ice than a David Lynch dream episode, and more gimmicks than a japanese toy convention. It'll fill you full of joy. Later in the month they'll be playing alongside NagNagNag's electro dominatrix JoJo de Freq in a celebration of perversity over at the Ocean Rooms. Go forth. Chic Out. |
| June 2005 |
New Currents - Top 10 Club Nights |
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Nikon Driver & kicking_k play genre hopping future music now. |
| June 2005 |
Latest 7 - Soundbite |
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Homegrown experimental disco genius |
| May 2005 |
Latest 7 - The Life Aquatic |
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Showing no signs of slowing, this monthly neo-boho explosion continues to swarm around the Sussex Arts Club like a mad orgy of fireflies. DJ brainiacs kicking_k and Nikon Driver have now uploaded the popular artist's slideshow to their website, www.voodoolily.co.uk, for 'ecstatic bedroom parties everywhere'. Back at the Arts Club, it's business as usual, meaning super-hot fresh future music and bubbles catching the light above a dancefloor packed to the gills (sorry) with DIY stars who do not need your permission to feel interesting and beautiful. Making their official debut in the bar are george and Robin, a piano/vox dynamic duo who'll foolishly attempt to cover some of the insane genre-bending ICFTHS Greatist Hits in an allegedly more civilised manner. |
| Mar 2005 |
Latest 7 - Shore 'nuff |
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Since splashing down at The Sussex Arts Club in February, it seems everyone and their evil twin is talking about It Came from the Sea. From the NME and The Guardian to the self-made superstars in the queue to get in, all eyes are on what has to be the most explosively stylish comeback of 2005 so far. Imagine a ballroom filled with billowing smoke, a heavy, heavenly psychedelic lightshow, specially-commissioned 'super-artistic' slides by photographers, illustrators, painters and wordsmiths and a hyperactive, mix + match soundtrack that tests the boundaries of 'hip-hop fashion pop electro sleaze rock action'. Draft in a crowd that contains no extras - a crowd that aren't afraid of dressing up or looking different, open-minded enough to u-turn every other song and not worry about the consequences and you're almost there. ICFTHS is a DIY conspiracy, a cult success, a Brighton nightlife legend-in-the-making - with both atmosphere and attitude to burn. Benevolent dictators and deejay auteurs Nikon Driver & kicking_k proclaim: "We're maximalists. We're into new experiences, not soothing memories. We have a lot of ideas. We get bored easily." Don't worry. Love or loathe it, that's the last thing that would happen inside this particular pleasure dome. |
| Mar 2005 |
The Source - In the Club Report |
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"The coolest night playing the coolest music before it was even cool. Did we mention it was cool?" Thus spoke the NME on the subject of It Came From The Sea and, for once, they might have just been right - this triumphant re-launch in their new home, the Sussex Arts Club, proved such a draw for local fashionistas it was one-in-one-out not long after 11pm. But, as promoter kicking_k explains, it's success isn't simply down to the free sweets, "We play the most exciting, innovative music we can find, we use as many special FX as we can and we spend a lot of time and energy making it as chaotic as possible"."We don't play your favourite music - we play your new favourite music," adds fellow promoter Nikon Driver, who believes that ICFTHS has "the fastest-evolving dance floor in Brighton". Their defiantly forward-looking music policy has its heart in DFA disco-not-disco and electro punk funk, but its outer edges veer wildly from grime, dance and hip-hop to "technicolour pop filth". It's a multi-media happening too, with slides projected onto the domed ceiling throughout the night. If for some strange reason you're not tempted already, then know that this month they celebrate their second birthday and are promising to provide "150 cakes and a ridiculous amount of fun things". Computer D.A.I.S.Y, who runs the entire night, adds, "Puny humans are advised to get down early or suffer the consequences". |
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