Next Saturday 2 April, Sydney weekly Adult Disco will celebrate its first birthday. And what a damn fine first year it has been. The Saturday night discothèque is the work of Future Classic’s three ringleaders Nathan, James and Chad, who decided last April that the Harbour City needed somewhere to get deep on a regular basis.

After warming a string of winter nights downstairs at the Civic, Adult Disco forged into summer with distinguished guests to burn. A highlights reel would include Tensnake, Pantha du Prince, Todd Terje, Holy Ghost!, Dixon, Ame and Friendly Fires, to name but a few.

Even when there wasn’t a marquee name in town, the Disco’s dancefloor still buzzed. It all comes down to the warm vibes coming out the Klipsch sound-system on a weekly basis. For this much-deserved edition of Looking Local, we conducted a round-table with the three dudes behind the Disco.

As you say in your first birthday spiel, there was a lot of talk about the survival rate of weekly parties when you started Adult Disco. Was year one bigger and better than you imagined it’d be?
James: Totally. It originally started as a winter party, we thought there was a void in Sydney when things started getting cold, all the festivals had packed up and there wasn’t anything new or interesting on the club horizon. Another reason was all the moaning in the inthemix forums that there were no decent weeklies and how boring Sydney is! I think our first really big night was with Jacques Renault, we thought, “Shit, we should probably book our summer acts.”

Nathan: Despite how great year one was, there’s no telling what the future will bring. If Sydney wants it, then we’ll keep doing our best to make it great. The feedback and support from media who get behind us despite the fact we’re not spending money advertising is excellent and a good sign that things are healthy. In Germany media like De:Bug objectively document a vibrant club scene which, in turn, makes it stronger for everyone.

There’s been plenty of rammed Saturdays at Adult Disco over the year. What have been some personal highlights for you guys?
James: For me the post-Parklife disco where Sidwho? and Luke Million were DJing before Holy Ghost! and Sid dropped Lay It On The Line by Logg. Sid ripped his shirt off and found some maracas; Cut Copy, New Young Pony Club and Holy Ghost! busted out some serious dance moves and everyone in the crowd piled onto the dancefloor. I think it was one of those beautiful long day in the sun, many drinks deep, time to party kind of moments for everyone.

Chad: Around the same time as that Holy Ghost! party we had a bit of a purple patch with Todd Terje, Chez Damier and Joakim all in the same month. That was super special for me. I’m usually the cynical or pessimistic one out of the Future Classic DJs and after that month of Discos I felt pretty inspired.

Nathan: Pantha Du Prince was a highlight for me as it showed the diversity of the music and moods Adult Disco embraces. Just before Christmas is a pretty weird time. Everyone’s been partying a lot but there’s also a fair bit of pre-Christmas emotion and angst around. Having a bleak but very beautiful techno set with a room full of indie kids seemed to suit the times perfectly.

You could really notice the difference in everyone’s psyche by the January 2 when we had Tensnake playing live. By then everyone had been zoned out and in the sun for days. The place was equally packed but with a completely different ‘loved up’ vibe.

What are some of the challenges of making a weekly night work in Sydney?
James: Keeping the night feeling new every weekend, booking a solid stream of acts every weekend, telling all your friends about another party every weekend, sourcing duct tape at 10pm every weekend. Also losing banners. We’ve lost two or three now and it would be pretty hard to just put one of those in your pocket so that’s a bit of a challenge.

Chad: Yep, whoever keeps stealing our 2m x 1m Adult Disco banners…you kind of suck.

I’d agree with James in that keeping the night interesting is a big challenge. Sydney often feels like people are most interested in something shiny and new rather than the music and the quality of the night. Having said that the audience we’ve engaged with for Adult Disco does feel very loyal and open-minded musically, which is nice.

There are a lot of guys we’d love to book and we know are amazing DJs but if they don’t have that one big track that people know them for, it can be very hard to get a solid audience to come see them.