Club of the Month: Club 77 (Sydney)

In Sydney’s ever-shifting nightlife, Club 77 remains a true one-of-one. For 30 years, the club has occupied the same address - 77 William Street - perched between the city’s corporate downtown and Kings Cross, once a notorious red-light district, now thoroughly gentrified.

Over those decades, 77 (or just ‘Sevs’) has weathered changing management, shifting sounds and scenes, and the persistent challenge of simply keeping a nightclub alive in Sydney. With capacity for just 180 dancers, it has served successive generations as many things: the last stop on a night out, an incubator for local talent, a weekly gathering space for underserved communities, and, at its core, a perfect room to lose yourself in a DJ set.

While its layout has shifted over time, the club still feels tethered to its past. From the William Street queue, you descend the stairs towards the thud, get your stamp and emerge into a basement with easily navigable dimensions. There’s a bar, nooks with couches and a compact dance floor wrapped in warm sound and lit by the red glow of overhead lamps. The hardwood timber DJ booth sits at one end, flanked by subtly raised platforms that quickly fill with bodies. Around the venue, framed photos trace dance music lore, while flyers and magazine cut-outs plaster the bathroom stalls - a nod to the history embedded in its walls. 

Club 77’s owner and music director, Dane Gorrel, took over the license in 2018 in the wake of Sydney’s lockout laws, which imposed 1:30am last entry and 3am last drinks. He then navigated the pandemic, bought out his partners, and in 2022 launched the club’s new era, initially programming music seven nights a week. This included a new roster of residents, including emerging talent such as Mazzacles, Reenie, Ciara and Jhassic alongside longtime custodians of Sydney nightlife Phil Smart and Barney Kato. In a city where many venues are owned by major hospitality groups and programmed by external promoters, Club 77’s in-house approach stands apart. “It’s self-funded and independent,” Dane says. “I don’t have any big backers behind me.”

Dane’s own 77 awakening came in 1999, at the age of 19. A committed surfer in his teens, he was pulled along by a friend for what was then the Friday night fixture Tweekin: “If you told me one day I’d own that club, I’d say you were crazy.” 

The ’90s were a defining era for the venue. Queer haven Club Kooky, run by scene flag-bearers Jonny Seymour (aka Seymour Butz) and DJ Gemma, held Sunday nights, while DJs Phil Smart and Sugar Ray anchored Fridays with Jus Right, which later evolved into Tweekin.

In the 2000s, the club entered another phase, with weeklies from Bang Gang and Starfvckers heralding the indie-dance and electro years. (Australian artists played an outsized role in that global explosion, including Cut Copy, The Presets and Bang Gang member Beni Single’s Riot in Belgium.) Ajax - the prodigiously talented DJ who bridged the Tweekin and Bang Gang generations and died in 2013 - is commemorated in a framed picture on the club’s wall. As the 2010s arrived, the sound shifted again, with various strains of house and techno taking hold, including the House of Mince’s Sunday-night queer fixture, Pavlova Bar.

At just 22 years old, Madi Martin-Bygrave - aka Club 77 resident Mazzacles - missed those earlier eras, but immersed herself in the club’s history from the moment she started playing there at 19. Her first gigs were four-hour warm-up sets on Mondays from 6pm - an off-the-deep-end education she savoured. “You could decide that you were going to play techno and really make some random tourist’s evening, or you could completely play dub for four hours, and that would also be permissible,” she says. “The amount of freedom was pretty wild.” 

With a deep-digging style beyond her years, Mazzacles soon graduated to weekends, where the format is typically just two DJs each playing four-hour sets. As she sees it, this reflects “an old-school way of clubbing and DJing,” where “you would just have this faith in whoever had been chosen [to play].” 

She also points to the club’s 5am finish as one of its defining qualities. “You see the natural point at which most Sydney punters have been conditioned to go home, which is 3:30am. So for the ones who actively fight that, 77 is the venue that cares enough about them to stay open regardless of whether there’s three people left, and the DJs will keep playing and putting in full effort until the end.” 

In recent years, the club has welcomed a number of revered DJs’ DJs, including Move D, Alton Miller, Fred P and Marcellus Pittman, as well as a Sunday night coup: an extended session from Theo Parrish. “Giving these guys a space to play really long sets has been the best education for everyone my age,” Mazzacles says. “And then to go see your mates play in this spot, or to play yourself, feels surreal.”

The reality of running a club in Sydney is often fraught. With fewer dedicated clubs than in decades past - particularly in the once-bustling Darlinghurst and Kings Cross precincts - Club 77 has been a regular target for local police. In 2024, the club trialled 22-hour parties running from 6am Sunday to 4am Monday, with queer-focused programming, but was forced to abandon the format after what Dane describes as “constant harassment” from Kings Cross Police. He recalls receiving a notice alleging 30 breaches. “Not one of them happened, nor could they prove any of them,” he says.

After stopping the 22-hour events, Dane says scrutiny eased, but “overzealous policing” has continued, including walk-throughs involving up to 15 officers and a drug detection dog. He adds that the attention is particularly frustrating given the club’s investment in its patrons’ wellbeing, including dedicated safety officers and specifically trained in-house security staff operating under the club’s own license. “We run a very safe and compliant venue,” he says. “To be honest, that’s part of our longevity strategy and plan. If you’re doing the wrong thing, you’re not going to be around for long.”

At the time of writing, Club 77 has temporarily closed until June 2026 for a major renovation aimed at improving accessibility, funded through a local government grant. Dane says the redesign will also enable expanded programming, including live music on weekdays and “in conversation” events, following recent talks at the venue with artists such as Nina Las Vegas and François K. “You can’t be one-dimensional anymore,” he adds. 

A night at Club 77 has rarely felt one-dimensional. In a scene now dominated by warehouse parties and one-off events, an intimate, welcoming small club built on diverse, non-commercial programming is a rarity. As Mazzacles puts it, “For a dependable venue where you know you’re going to be welcome until 5am, there’s no other place like it in Sydney right now.”

All music featured in this article has been selected by Club 77 regulars, drawn from across the club’s history. 

CLUB 77 ARTIST MEMORIES:

Jonny Seymour (Club Kooky co-founder):

Club Kooky was birthed at Club 77 in the mid-90s, during a time when Oxford Street, then known as the Golden Mile, was a busy, bustling haven for the gay community. But something was missing. The LBTIQ parts of the community were often unwelcome in these spaces. 

We [DJ Gemma and Jonny Seymour] recognised a need to create something different: a place grounded in queer autonomy, where everything looked, sounded, felt smelled and tasted outside the mainstream monoculture of the time. The conservative, exclusionary nature of much of gay clubland only deepened this urgency. Their friends, trans people, Indigenous and queer people of colour, ravers, ferals, bubblegum punks, goths, leather daddies, homeless queers, psychonauts, sex workers, proto-bears, and those living with HIV, were being judged, refused entry, or made to feel unwelcome among the dominant white, cis-male culture of Oxford Street. 

Labelled “too kooky,” this slur was reclaimed as a badge of honour and became the name for a new kind of gathering. After discovering a small, lesbian-owned basement bar on William Street, Club Kooky emerged as a one-off Sunday night party during a rainy winter. People came, shared food, watched performances, saw bands, danced until dawn, and demanded it happen again. 

And so it did, one Sunday at a time. Those who gathered called themselves Kooksters. Weeks turned into months, months into years, and years into over a decade of Club Kooky: a vibrant, off-scene sanctuary that became an essential part of Gadigal’s nightlife and queer cultural history.

Barney Kato (resident DJ):

As a punter, Cut Copy DJs playing Fuck Tha Police by Public Enemy straight after a ten minute police raid on the packed club definitely stands out. The timeframe is pretty hazy on this one, but I'm gonna say sometime in the early 2000s.

Then, as a DJ, playing the final House of Mince Pavlova Bar in 2019. Ending the night covered in pavlova dancing to Prince's Let's Go Crazy with a club full of friends is pretty unforgettable. Lately I've been just enjoying how a variety of different stuff works in there, twisting my sets up with everything from dubstep to jungle to disco in the later hours.

Phil Smart (resident and Tweekin co-founder):

I remember when Michael Mayer came to play his first time in Sydney. It was highly anticipated and I was supposed to close after him, but he’d been playing such mind-blowing music, so expertly crafted, and it was such a rare treat for us that I just knew that the only thing to do was to give up my set so he could keep playing. It was the only time I’ve ever done that in 35 years of DJing and it was totally worth it! 

Magda Bytnerowicz (77 favourite):

As you can imagine, it's hard to pick one particular 77 moment, as I'm privileged to have been able to play there semi-regularly for quite a few years now. 

I think the one that really trumps was the time Trinity and I played the early doors set on New Year’s Day, January 1. We thought it would be quiet for ages but people started showing up really early, absolutely ready to roll. The energy skyrocketed pretty quickly, so I decided to pull out the legendary Azzido Da Bass Doom's Night remix, which sent the place absolutely mental, and I don't think it was even midnight yet. 77 does that so, so well.