Glaswegian legend Jackmaster began to spin a little after midnight, gathering a modest crowd at the Cave in Sydney’s Chinese Laundry.

Representing the Glaswegian label Numbers, Jackmaster stands proud alongside names such as Jamie xx, Mosca, Deadboy, Hudson Mohawke and Rustie. Unlike them however, he’s a purist DJ – opting not to advance his career through producing tracks, but instead focusing on keeping the clubs alive.

And keep Chinese Laundry alive he did. For a whole two hours, it was pure house with classics from Robin S’ Show Me Love to some of this years’ biggest releases, including Mosca’s tune Bax a Numbers. He even broke it up with the most perfect drop of Lil Wayne’s A Milli, which had the crowd bouncing and shouting along in their best Weezy voices. But all the while, Jackmaster skilfully juggled his headphones and a bottle of bourbon.

Things got serious when Jackmaster started flipping through the vinyls. One of the crowd burst through with a wax copy of a Ramadanman tune Work Them and presented it to him like a bar of pure gold. Jackmaster praised him for it, and immediately worked it into his mix.

Australia has a habit of scaring off big names from the UK – most notably Pearson Sound, who had a less than pleasant reception when an angry clubber jumped to the front and screamed “play some dubstep you f—-ing [something really rude]”. To the relief of many, Jackmaster announced (or warned?) the audience on Facebook that it’d be house and ‘maybe some Garage’ all night – but that’s not to say his set wasn’t missing any bass.

In the hour out, Jackmaster strayed from the house to mix some more adventurous sounds in. Even SBTRKT’s killer Wildfire snuck its way into the set, complete with Drake’s amazing verse.

Jackmaster shifted between going hard with techno, sliding in the funky rhythms of garage and slotting in tastes of dubstep. It was sounds like the latter that divided the crowd, causing some to move into the bigger rooms – maybe we’re just not used to it, but Jackmaster deserves praise for bringing sounds we’d never expect into our clubs.

By the end of the night, Jackmaster was pulling back tunes three times over so we could all savour the drop again. The bottle of bourbon was making its way around the crowd, and returned to the DJ rightly empty. Finishing with some rock and funk, he left the stage to massive cheers.

Jumping between unfamiliar rhythms and some solid house, Jackmaster held the crowd together for an impressive three hours. Perhaps, reactions like this will begin to lure some of the UK’s best back to our tiny island home.