Vice Style

Vintage shirt, Levi's 519 Skinny fit jeans, vintage socks, vintage shoes

Anyone who knows anything about London's clubs, probably already thinks of 18-year-old Sam Kilcoyne as a veteran club promoter. Sam’s night Underage was maybe the first club run by a minor to get acres of national press coverage. Then there’s the three-year-old annual festival by the same name. Currently Kilcoyne plays keyboards in a band called S.C.U.M who reminded him of his Dad's band Add N To (X). Though Sam isn't an over-privileged rich kid, he actually still lives in his mum’s tiny Camberwell council flat, just down the road from his latest club night, With Bare Fists.

---

Vintage sweater, Levi's 519 Skinny fit jeans, vintage hat, vintage shoes

Vice: How do you become a 14-year-old club promoter?
Sam: Well, I didn’t really know it had a name. I didn’t have any idea of what words like club promoting meant at the time. I was lucky in that my dad knew the people working at the Coronet and I’d go with him to see bands there. Actually, every time I get asked about starting out my opinions change. I think the drive came from wanting to see bands in a small space and at eye-level, in the sort of place you could get to meet the band afterwards, rather than only being able to see bands in massive arenas. It was also a way of shaking things up and probably giving the middle finger to the people who’d been allowed into gigs when I wasn’t. But really, club promoting is just a nice thing to share with people.

Vintage sweater, Levi's 519 Skinny fit jeans, vintage hat, vintage shoes

What’s the best thing about running festivals and clubs?
Seeing everything you’ve toiled for, being enjoyed after months of anticipation, catering for the audience and bringing in new bands. The great thing about the Underage audience is that you totally know if your band is shit. Under-18s are much more brutal, they will just leave. Nor are there so many know-it-alls, everyone has more fun and genuinely cares about the band. The Underage audience is constantly searching for a new thing to adore and study. Except for the guys that have been out every night since they were 10 and done more pills than Shaun Ryder. They’re always there talking shit, but that’s OK.

And, what's happening with the next festival?
We’re talking line-ups and headliners, and I wanting to have something like a car boot fair or stalls, or something. When I was in Rome, I went to this club where you could go and have dinner, shop on two floors of clothes and records stalls, then you watch the band, before getting mashed-up and dancing till 6am.

How on earth does a 16-year-old persuade a council to hand over a park for the throwing of a festival?
That was probably at the height of the press hype about Underage, so it’s not as if they didn’t know about the club. Also, I had help from my old man and Tom Baker from Eat Your Own Ears. My position with the festival has got a bit smaller recently, but we’ve always made decisions in a quite democratic anyway.

Levi's t-shirt, Levi's 519 Skinny fit jeans, vintage shoes

Vintage sweater, vintage jacket, Levi's 519 Skinny fit jeans, vintage hat, vintage shoes

So your new club With Bare Fists what's it like?
I’m running it with my friend, Stanley Sintra. It’s at a club called The Crypt, in a still-functioning 300-year-old church in Camberwell. We mostly play old soundtracks. I think the club is a real goer, there’s really something interesting happening it seems like people are really there for the music. The Camberwell crowd have a really different style thing going on, a lot of them are really creative - it’s a special place probably because of Camberwell Art School. It’s also nice to be able to stagger home to my mum’s flat and pass out in my own bed at the end of the night.

I never went but that club Incendiary Device sounded amazing?
Ha ha, that’s funny. That only ever existed on MySpace, at the time I was DJing a lot of punk in a pub in Shoreditch. I’m obsessed with inventing new clubs, working out who would play there, who would go, what sort of music we’d have on, the general aesthetic and what the crowd would wear. I’m always stuffing diaries and notebooks full of research I’ve collected on my latest obsession. I love recording playlists on CDs and the other day I even bought 200 cassettes just to fill with new compilations. Weirdly, I was lazy at school and didn’t do much, but I like to give myself a goal instead of just sitting around on Facebook all day. I’ve got a real thirst for knowledge now, teaching myself, I’ve learnt to look at art in a whole new way.

Vintage shirt, Levi's 519 Skinny fit jeans, vintage hat, vintage shoes

London’s full of the progeny of successful musicians these days, but your dad's band Add N To (X) still sound pretty fresh and were being written about and charting less than 10 years ago, so you must have been able to learn a lot from that, right?
Yeah, my dad massively inspired a lot of what I do and some of his records are my absolute favorite. He was constantly on tour when I was growing up and I’d happily keep travelling and moving around, I don’t care if I don’t become famous or make any money. When I saw S.C.U.M smashing their synths up at their second ever gig, they reminded me of Add N To (X) - they were loaded with aggression. I decided I didn’t want t be a fan of the band, I wanted to be in the band.

How’s promoting compare to playing in a band?
It’s like going from being the head of something, to being part of a machine. In the machine I have to try my hardest play to play that bit better and that bit louder. I like being a part of a machine.

This is the fourth part of Backstage Heroes, a series of five interviews Vice and Levi’s have put together discussing music and fashion with the guys working in the music business. Click these links to see parts: 1, 2 and 3.

Find out more about the Levi's 519 Skinny fit jeans here.

PHOTOS: JACOB PERLMUTTER
STYLING: SAM VOULTERS

TAGGED: Levi's