If you’re one of many folk around town right now, reeling from the onslaught of world-class festivals, DJs and producers heading down under this summer, you’d be forgiven for not turning up to Mad Racket’s ‘Locals Night for Winners and Losers’. Sure, we’ve all been bankrupted by soaring ticket prices, been left in a daze with set time dilemmas and shouldered transport woes aplenty – and it’s only November. For the people I spoke to afterwards, this was why they’d chosen to stay away. Either that or they had a nail-biting Kevin07 party to get down to.

So the crowd here tonight was small, but they made up for it with both enthusiasm and friendliness. Both are hallmarks of Mad Racket’s Locals Nights, of which there might be two a year. There’s no international act, just the four who run the night, with occasionally a friend or two thrown in. Tonight, it was locals Jimi Polar and Jamie Lloyd, playing live.

We got there a little before midnight and immediately thought everyone had stayed away to watch the election. Chuckling, we got inside with nary a queue in sight and headed straight to the bar for a couple of beers and a quick look around. DJ Simon Caldwell was playing a bleepy deep tech set, really giving the Bowl-O-Sonic soundsystem a workout in the lower frequencies. Our beers frothed in our hands as we walked past the speaker stacks.

We did a quick lap to see who was about – and oddly enough, there wasn’t anyone I knew there. Seats and couches were sparely populated, but the dancefloor was grooving as Caldwell threw in some Detroit vibes, and lifted it with some house. A dreamy acapella wafted in and the crowd let out a yell. We sat to the side of one of the stacks to finish our beers and await the main act.

With a dark military hat set squarely on his head, Jimi Polar took to the stage first to set up his effects unit and midi keyboard. He was followed by the plucky Jamie Lloyd. Were he a Sydneysider (and DJing) nine years ago I have no doubt he’d have been one of the Rackets founders since his non-bollocks, no nonsense attitude and musical tastes are so similar to Caldwell and the other Racketeers. He took out a laptop, microphone and turned to Caldwell to begin his set.

And gosh, what a set it was. Evoking a tribal note at first, Polar provided the beats Lloyd would embellish, looping in ghetto sounds, disco, soul, jungle and jazz while speaking into the mic, distorting his voice in real time. For a while there, Polar’s intricately spun web of sounds failed to come together. Like an ill-timed beatmix, one side of the room would begin a beat while the other followed, so you’d follow the sound round and round until – Eureka! – it all comes together. And what a revelation it was!

I’d go into more detail about what was played, or how the rest of the club was faring at this stage but in all honesty, I can’t. I couldn’t leave the dancefloor, and while my feet were moving they sure weren’t taking me off it. On stage, Polar would lay down some funk, undercut it with techno then lift it back up with a soul jazz vibe that blew me away for the fact it was Lloyd singing it, right in front of me, like a gospel choir tenor. These two are incredible live, and if they played like this on their recent European tour then I can see why they’ve garnered so much respect.

The best part of the night? Realising that here you were, at a Racket on full-power without the crush, queues and tourists. The night, like the day earlier, fell together like a Labor landslide after 11 years of conservative rule. We love it when Racket keep things local – every cent is so much more worth it.