What’s the best recipe for a banging night out that’s full of getting down and dirty on the dance floor? Start with well-known Brisbane gig Drop at Empire, and blend in the dark rich sounds of the boys who brought Darkbeat into the world; Rollin’ Connection from Melbourne. Kill the lights in the covertly revered Moon Bar at Empire, and sit back to let the lights and music take you to a place of dirty underground delight!

The Rollin’ Connection lads are DJ/producer duo Darius Bassiray and Daniel Banko, who recently celebrated the 5th year birthday of their trailblazing Melbourne night Darkbeat. They celebrated this milestone over Easter with an extravagant and well-attended 24hour event, showcasing typically classy acts such as Layo & Bushwacka!, Nic Fanciulli, Chris Fortier and Dave Seaman. Never doing anything in halves, the boys stretched it out over 24 hours with a boat party that was followed by a long night of music at Brown Alley.

Rollin’ Connection have also been regular guests at Sunny, another of Melbourne’s most infamous underground parties. Beginning in 1997 with a few friends throwing a birthday party, all in attendance had their socks rocked off and it became a monthly event. With parties drawing crowds of up to 1500 punters at all sorts of unique venues, it was all done with no form of advertising – only word of mouth!

For Darius and Daniel, who became friends in high school and don’t have musical backgrounds in the traditional sense, surprisingly playing gigs to huge crowds is now like a stroll in the park to them. They run a pretty tight ship, and have such familiarity that can only come from years of working together. “We chose to play turntables and CD players after going to a few influential parties around Melbourne in early 2000, and one of those parties was Sunny. So it’s quite a ‘full circle’ type thing to be playing there now, and even better to be traveling interstate. Drop is very similar in terms of crowd awareness; last time we played it was great – with a very good quality crowd.”

And while they started Darkbeat from absolutely nothing, they’re now hosting an endless list of some of the world’s most talented and revered DJs including James Holden, James Zabiela, Clive Henry, Michael Mayer, Marc Romboy, John Tejada, Sander Kleinenberg and many more. They aim to make every night different, but at the end of the day they want to entertain. “We play a sound that is very unique to Darkbeat and Sunny parties in Melbourne, on the deep tech house and progressive techno tip.”

While they’re the first to admit that their style is not for everyone, this ahsn’t stopped them from reveling in in dropping some extremely twisted records into their sets. “There are some people that like music accessible, then again for some of the chinstrokers it’s too ‘heavy;, and they have that ‘it has to be minimal’ and ‘bring the music down’ type of attitude. Then there are a portion of the crowd that really ‘get it’ especially in Melbourne, who enjoys the wider spectrum of sounds which are the best crowds to play to. Minimal is great in DJ sets to warm the room up with, and we do play quite a few minimal house records but there comes a time to take things a bit further which is where driving techy house comes into play!”

And the music really does encompass their whole life. “We work within it daily for our parties, practice it every weekend and make it in the studio so it is everything to us. We haven’t really had a hell of a lot of time in the studio – as we have been devoted all our time to Darkbeat. But there is one new one coming out on Jamie Stevens, John Delegalis and Stel’s new imprint Dieb Audio, called Jeebuz Champ which was done with Melbourne boy Paul Beynon, and it should be out soon on vinyl and digital.”

Brisvegas punters have also been waiting ever-so patiently for Rollin’ Connection to head north once more. It was winter ‘07 when Drop vs Sunny hosted the ITM members party. But the wait is over, and I’m predicting that Rollin’ Connection will rock the party this weekend. And representing the Brisbane sounds will be residents Scott Walker and Magoo, with special guests Dave Basek from Junkbeats who is debuting his brand new live show for the first time in Brisbane, as well as Mike Redfern from Logic and Rikki Newton from Subtrakt.

Drop has been tirelessly delivering quality music to the masses for nearly five years now, not only hosting events in their hometown of Brisbane, but also in Cairns, Townsville and the Gold Coast. And they’re notoriously focussed on the music – music that is underground yet accessible, deep and dark yet still with the funk and dancefloor orientated. So what can the crowd expect when Darius and Dan are behind the decks? “Well, if it was anything like last time we might have 15 scotches lined up on the table – it really depends on how Scott Walker is behaving.”

Rollin’ Connection can be seen at Drop vs Sunny at Empire Hotel’s Moon Bar on Friday April 4.