The Subservice boys have done it again, with yet another quality night of utter messiness at the Civic Hotel, right in the heart of Sydney. This month featured the remarkable duo Rollin Connection, consisting of Melbourne based DJ/producers Darius Bassiray & Daniel Banko. In the supporting slots we were also given the pleasure of Sweetchilli’s very own Daniel Crocetti and Crispin, and to top it off, Ben Morris also graced the decks with some good solid tech-house. For those who have been hiding under a rock for the past few months, Subservice is a quality night that boasts a plethora of great sounds from all things tech and progressive, as well as all the minimal, cowbell-tapping music the world has to offer. Past guests have included homegrown talents like Danni Bonicci and Kriece, and it looks as though the big acts will keep Rollin in! (Excuse the pun)

As the long winter nights get colder and windier, this should be more reason to venture out and huddle around the heated DJ booths around the city, and in my opinion the Civic Hotel is the perfect place to do this. The atmosphere is very inviting, and on Friday night it was considerably satisfying to find that there were already quite a few punters having a nice shuffle on the dance floor. Residents Dave Nolan and Andrew Wowk were busy abusing the sound system, playing some very lush sounding tech house including Cobblestone Jazz’s Dump Truck and Nic Fanciulli’s remix of I Try by Francois Dubois. This of course led ever so nicely into Daniel C and Crispin’s fantastic warm up, which had plenty of tasty pumping vocal tracks to get people off the couches dancing, spinning and falling over.

Towards the end of that most enjoyable set from the Sweetchilli crew, the place was getting nice and populated. I’m sure a lot of people were drawn to the hype growing around Rollin Connection, as they’ve built up such a high profile in Melbourne with that city’s Darkbeat parties, playing at just about every large event and supporting some of the world’s finest international acts.

They both tore the Civic apart and delivered one of the most diverse and crunching techno sets I’ve ever witnessed, full of complex mind-screwing percussion and twisted basslines. It was actually even more pleasing to watch the faces of some of the punters there that had no clue who these people were, and then like magic came running along to dance to the music. Infectious rhythms and rolling drumbeats helped to get people excited, but then out of nowhere Darius or Daniel would screw with the effects, or even drop a track that would make people stop like a deer in the headlights, unable to get their heads around what was actually happening. It was unmistakable when they decided to play the Opencloud remix of their latest track Our Sound, a dark thumping murky tech-house track that sounds like what would happen if you were strapped to a sound system and sent hurdling into a black hole. No kidding!

Ben Morris also played an impressive set afterwards, dropping a much more tech/experimental set than what he is known for. The Rollin Connection boys basically gave him a doorway to get down and dirty, as the crowd had just experienced such a versatile selection of sounds they were ready for anything. All in all a top night out, and thanks again to the guy’s at Subservice for bringing us these outstanding gigs each month.