Lost Baggage is a relatively new party, but it’s rapidly making a name for itself with a list of high quality international and local acts as long as my arm. A great vibe, quirky decorations and themes, and a fantastic venue. This month the crowd traveled to Mexico (well…it was actually Kings Cross, but the theme was Mexico) and the lineup featured Swiss sensation Ripperton (of Lazy Fat People fame), as well as locals such as Claire Morgan, John Devecchis and Sylvio.

I arrived around fifteen minutes into Frisco’s mainroom opening set, which was an intelligent blend of both deep, as well as stripped back and simple grooves and heavier, more dancefloor-oriented tech sounds. Martin Buttrich’s Hunter was an early highlight, as was the aptly titled Funk Worms by Stimming, a quirky, squiggly bassline driven tech-funk workout. Over in the Bump lounge Trinity was given the honour of playing the inaugural track, and was followed by Claire Morgan. Both Claire and Trinity played stunning sets, and in all honesty, were probably my personal highlights of the evening. Trinity kept it dark, growling and techy, burrowing deep into the underground with some smashing subterranean grooves that really worked the sound system. Claire Morgan took more of a straight-up techno approach to her set, laying down a great selection of grooves that ranged from funky and percussive (including Acid Casual’s Code, which was a great blast from the past) to melodic and Detroit-inspired. Oh, and both of them are friggin’ tight mixers, too.

Out on the terrace the Disco Not Disco DJs were holding down the ranks with a killer set of quirky disco, nu-wave, electro-pop and mechanical grooves. Having never seen them play before, I was curious to check out whether they were worthy of the hype they’ve recently been creating, and I can tell you: they are. Dropping plenty of diverse jams including Can’t Kick This Feeling When It Hits by recent visitor Moodymann, Juan Maclean’s left-of-centre reworking of I Go Hard, I Go Home and Roll by Macho, the boys had plenty of feet tapping and heads nodding in appreciation. Back in the mainroom John Devecchis was in the middle of a smashing warmup set, which meandered between deep, minimal tech house, punchy, clicky grooves, and some bouncy melodic new-school progressive house, including Uberknocker from Scope, a great melodic dancefloor workout that suits any time of the night. As always his mixing was scarily on point, and his track selection and set programming were typically brilliant, with Devecchis layering tracks for several minutes at a time, and building the energy up to the perfect point before leveling off and leaving Ripperton plenty of room to move.

At 1.30am, an hour before his scheduled starting time (which was a great decision, by the way), Ripperton took over the controls and proceeded to turn everyone’s brains into silly putty. Across the nigh-on three hours he played, he brought together a wide variety of music, spanning minimal, deep, dark techno, melodic tech, funky tech house, glitchy nonsense and even a splash of that great ‘neo-prog sound (a really deep, dark, techy take on melodic progressive, in case you were wondering). And for a producer who only took up DJing relative recently, his mixing was very tight, with only a few mistakes here and there, and there was plenty of clever effects use throughout the set, particularly during breakdowns and buildups.

The first hour of his set was deeeeeep. Like, really deep. So deep I’m not sure deep is deep enough to describe how deep it was. You dig? But it was awesome. Highlights of the first hour were Robert Babicz’s Sin, Zugunruhe by Ripperton himself, and the Radio Slave dub of Francois K’s Road Of Life, as well as plenty of the unreleased goodness he was dropping. As the second hour progressed, so did the tunes: the beats got tougher, the basslines got bigger, and the tracks got a little more epic. By this stage the crowd was well and truly in the palm of Ripperton’s hand (excuse the cliché), and he knew it. The smiles emanating from both his and the punters’ faces were infectious, and the tunes just kept getting better and better. The monstrous Decay by Joris Voorn was definitely the best track in this part of the set, but cuts such as Dennis Ferrer’s A Black Man In Space, Ripperton’s mix of Tides by Beanfield and the thoroughly underrated James Holden remix of Andre Kraml’s Safari did equally well to rock the floor.

In his final hour, Ripperton threw caution to the wind and just played some great tunes, regardless of how well it flowed. In some ways it dampened a bit of the impact each track was having, but in others it was nice to just hear some great music, regardless of its genre. Funky tech house jams such as The Bounce from Kenlou sat alongside anthems including Tresspassers by New World Aquarium and the soon-to-be classics Mumbling Yeah by Kabale Und Liebe and Dubfire’s Ribcage.

Over in the Bump lounge and on the terrace, the Bump DJs and Sylvio respectively provided great distractions from Ripperton. The Bump DJs smashed out some excellent old-school sounding acid house jams, some jackin’ Chicago house, and even splashes of balls-to-wall cranking techno, while Sylvio kept it funky and deep on the terrace, repping the Paradise Lost sound. Having not seen either Bump or Sylvio play before, I was thoroughly impressed by both and will definitely be keeping an eye out for future appearances from these guys. You should, too. Emerson::Murat took care of closing duties in the mainroom, and man did they do a great job of it. Following on from Ripperton’s lead perfectly, they kept the energy level steady for about fifteen minutes or so before gradually building their set towards some smashing loopy techno goodness. Being the chinstroker I am, I was pretty disappointed I couldn’t ID any of their tunes, but I can tell you every single one was dope. An excellent closing set if I ever saw one!

So another month passes and Lost Baggage runs another great party. Excuse the cheesey joke, but: they may have lost their baggage, but they’ve definitely found their niche in Sydney. Olé.