DJ Gavin Hardkiss keeps the underground alive at Monterey’s Compact Disco.

As one of the legendary Hardkiss brothers, DJ Gavin Hardkiss helped ignite the early-’90s San Francisco rave scene.

He is anything but nostalgic, he simply has a lifelong passion for creating music. Hardkiss’ longtime residency at Compact Disco is a high point of his current gigs.

“It’s the coolest bar or club that I play at,” he says. “It hits every note that I like.”

Tucked into downtown Monterey, Compact Disco is small and easy to miss, more a listening room than a spectacle-driven nightclub – and that’s exactly the point. The venue runs on a simple but firm set of rules: no requests, long sets and no phones on the dance floor. For Hardkiss, that structure creates rare freedom.

“As a DJ’s DJ, I’m not here to play your soundtrack,” he says. “I love the fact that there are no requests. I have my music, not theirs.”

The intimacy of the space allows him to take his time. “I like to transport people to a different world. In five hours, I can take them to a lot of different places. It doesn’t have to be an amusement park ride.”

Instead of quick hits or constant drops, his sets unfold gradually, with room for shifts in tone, tempo and mood. Over the course of a night, Hardkiss may move through newer Latin sounds, breakbeat, disco and other influences.

“I’m pretty diverse when it comes to DJing,” he says. “I can flex that at Compact Disco. I can play different styles – not just house or EDM.”

The format also gives Hardkiss a place to share music that rarely surfaces elsewhere. He produces a large volume of material, far more than he ever releases publicly. He prefers to introduce new music live. “It’s what I do,” he says. “I make songs.”

At Compact Disco, Hardkiss can weave long stretches of unreleased material into a set, sometimes playing an hour or more of original music. He pays attention to how the room responds and uses that feedback to help decide what eventually gets released. New music comes out only a few times a year, shaped by real-world reaction rather than online metrics.

Compact Disco attracts an attentive crowd that comes to experience a DJ. Subtle changes have space to land – a setup that suits Hardkiss quite well.

DJ GAVIN HARDKISS plays 9pm Friday, Dec. 19. Compact Disco, 420 Tyler St., Monterey. No cover. compactdisco.org.