When I was seventeen, it was a very good year. It was a very good year for small town girls and drum n’ bass. Thursday night raving, Friday college a bleary eyed wipe out. And why not? With the weekend monopolised by techno, trance, R&B and the various permutations of house that sound exactly the same, it’s good to get your dancing out of the way beforehand. And the crew from No Frills gave us exactly that, a day earlier this time on Wednesday night.

With its five buck entry, $9.50 jugs and ‘new’ old couches, the Abercrombie is just the right venue for this type of night – ‘for headz, by headz.’

With Kiwi Bulletproof taking the headline slot there was warmup from Dubious and Dauntless, two local acts who are both good mixers, playing a range of styles and keeping things quite light in preparation. The D n’ B fraternity in Sydney is relatively small and you tend to see the same faces mixed in with the walk ins, which works quite well – it was like a continuation of the last night I went to, or the one before that.

With Hijack doing the sound (loud) and the dancefloor (small) easily filling up, Bulletproof took to the podium. He played dark, grimy, technical, ugly, mash up music. Excellent. People going mental on the dance floor, beer flying around (but who cares – got a jug), enough space to throw your feet about and crowded enough for that dance floor smog to rise. Means you can go for it and then calm back down again without losing your sphere. Dancefloor politics.

Outside in the beer garden there was a bit of chilling out going on beneath the canopies, and if you go to the Abercrombie you can marvel at the fig vine that monopolises a whole wall; bountiful as ever with fruit. Fi

No Frills are presenting Break & Fierce from the UK at Hermann’s next month, so this was a good taster for that, but it was more besides. The geared up crowd was plentiful in numbers and in the approaching off-season, it’s good to see nights still going strong with decent imports.

Bulletproof carried on laying down the darkness, futuristic ‘neurofunk’ designed for the dancefloor. His album Shake the Foundations is out now, and there’s a lot to be said for his aggressive style; particularly in today’s climate of wishy-washy soulful D&B. A good Wednesday night then, cheap and cheering.