The weather that greeted the crowd on Saturday when they arrived at the latest of Chinese Laundry’s legendary ‘Garden Party’ series was ideal in every sense; warm and sunny without any of the tropical humidity that descends on Sydney during the summer months.

The events are grand occasions indeed – kicking off a year ago with the enigmatic Sasha, and backing it up this year with the likes of James Zabiela, Hybrid and Timo Maas, it’s for occasions when the acts are just so big they need to spill out from the cramped downstairs club and into the blissful open air of the courtyard. This time it was that ol’ doyan of the breaks scene Krafty Kuts, playing for a hefty three hours and drawing a sold-out crowd of seasoned punters who’d probably witnessed him slay it many times before.

Against The Grain labelmate and fellow veteran Skool of Thought was on warmup duties from 5pm, laying down a set of breakbeat that curiously sounded a little dated and out of step with the sound he’s been pushing recently. Nonetheless, it got the job done and when the ol’ geezer Krafty stepped into place at 7pm just as the sun was starting to set – it was on.

The last time I’d seen Krafty Kuts perform was at Summafieldayze on the Gold Coast in January, when he literally shredded the crowd with such a ferocious onslaught of noisy electro-infused breakbeat that I had to sit down and take a breather for a while once his hour was up. And this was this vibe he kicked off his set with on Saturday – a devastating barrage of nu-school breaks and electro/fidget-inspired noise, turbo-charged with the kind of party energy he’s always been known for.

Featuring heavily among the fresh nu-school cuts was a sizable collection of Krafty’s own “re-rubs”, the kind that were so controversially featured on his Against The Grain comp last year. He’s taken to handpicking weapons from outside of the breaks scene and refashioning them with a thumpin’ broken beat, and these re-rubs have arguably been the most contentious point of discussion among the breaks faithful over the past 12 months.

It’s true most of the time they account for little more than replacing the 4/4 beat with a broken one (hence labelling it a “re-rub” rather than a “remix”), but what equally can’t be ignored is how perfectly these tunes work when re-engineered as a breaks weapon.

His re-rub of Dirtyloud’s mix of Aaren San’s Apes From Space, or Deadmau5’s and Wolfgang Gartner’s latest thumping collaboration, absolutely destroyed the crowd. Krafty’s gift is that he can spot the tunes that just work in a breaks set, to the point where they’re often indecipherable from the other nu-school slammers he’s laying down. If breaks has been lacking the same consistency and innovation that’s been thriving in the house, fidget and electro scenes, it makes sense to pluck a little inspiration from where the action is.

Wherever your opinion might be – the slammin’ beats and thundering basslines were devastating, and he kept the crowd’s energy high at all times. Any breaks fanatic will tell you there’s just something special about the sound that you won’t hear in any kind of club music, a certain groove all its own. Breaks have always been about taking the party energy and beats of hip hop, and injecting it with more of a electronic sensibility that’s closer to house or techno; for mine, after being locked for most of this year in a tech-house groove, it was a thrill to feel that irrepressible energy again.

That is, when we weren’t jostling for space, being crushed into the person next too us, queuing endlessly for drinks or trying to actually hear the music, until the speakers were finally given a bit of juice around half an hour into the set. Many of us will always have a love-hate relationship with the Chinese Laundry; you can’t understate how much the promoters are tuned into proper dance culture, and what really matters to the enthusiasts – but they’re doing it in a venue that often doesn’t do it justice.

The whole point of a Garden Party is that it’s too big to fit into the perpetually cramped conditions downstairs, but on Saturday the place was still bursting at the seams, and often quite uncomfortable. Maybe we could cop the price of tickets rising to $50, for the sake of selling a few hundred less? However they do it, it’d just be nice to see the passion of the promoters matched with a little more respect given to their punters.

Not to let this get in the way though, as Krafty’s set was kicking ass every step of the way. Interspersed with all the straight-out breakbeat was a ridiculous amount of bootlegs, acapellas, samples, chorus snippets and other musical tidbits, mashed in seamlessly with the other tunes and often swept in and out the mix so quickly that if you blinked, you’d miss them.

Everyone from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dizzee Rascal, Armand Van Helden, Duck Sauce, Yolanda Be Cool – the tracklisting probably would have counted in the hundreds, and it would have taken hours and hours of studio work to prepare all these mash-ups. He’s always been the master of whipping out that old anthem that you probably haven’t heard for years, but the cleverness is that it’s weaved into a proper, balls-out breaks set in a manner that eschews any kind of overt cheesiness.

Around 70 minutes in, he finally dropped the energy into the sort of funky, hip hop inspired sounds that used to be so popular in the breaks scene. It was a welcome change in pace, and just one of the many shifts in a set that went in so many different directions, it was often dazzling. Complimented by regular pre-recorded shoutouts from Krafty offsider MC Dynamite, offering commentary on what direction the set was heading in, or telling us this was Krafty’s “favourite city in the world”.

Add to that the regular excursions into dubstep and drum n’ bass, and you had a set that was stunningly clever, eclectic, dynamic and always surprising. The energy was eventually fired back into energetic nu-school territory towards the end, before he wrapped it up with his classic * Kurtis Blow* led _These Are The Breaks*.

All up, it was three hours of relentless entertainment. Krafty Kuts has his detractors in the breaks underground, but the fact is that he delivers far more than most DJs do, regardless of what dance genre you’re talking about. As much as breaks might have slipped off the radar for the clubbing mainstream, Krafty still kicks it among the top-tier DJs.

The set had panache, diversity, energy and flow. It had cutting-edge new music, it had the remixes and bootlegs, and it had the classics. Impossible to fault, it was the ultimate three-hours of turbo-charged entertainment. Overcrowded conditions aside, it was one of Sydney’s most memorable events in a long time.