We were asked by BBC 6 Music to put together a mini mix in tribue to Andrew Weatherall to celebrate what would have been his 60th birthday. It is made up entirely of music Andrew had a hand in. Broadcast April 7th 2023.

Optimo (Espacio) - Andrew Weatherall 60th birthday tribute mix for BBC 6 Music

https://soundcloud.com/twitch
https://soundcloud.com/optimo-music
Artwork: https://soundcloud.com/greta-motif
🔊 https://youtu.be/POMQe3EZzwQ

JD Twitch began his journey into music and djing in 1987, just in time for the arrival of Acid House and Rave. He started two legendary Scottish clubs - Pure and Optimo, the latter a duo with Jonnie Wilkes which recently celebrated 25 years of global touring, outrageous parties, and communitarian activism. He produces, remixes, promotes, presents radio shows, music supervises for films and runs the hard to pigeonhole Optimo Music label.

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LAYER #335 | JD Twitch (Optimo Music)

Excerpt from Rebecca Lane & Clara de Asís "Distances Bending", live at Oscillation festival, Brussels (BE), 29 April 2023.

A collaborative composition by Clara de Asís and Rebecca Lane deriving from a series of encounters and explorations throughout different times, spaces and forms.

Distances Bending is an ever-expand­ing pro­cess — a build­ing up, dis­tilling, and mir­ror­ing of mater­i­als par­tic­u­lar to each artist, respond­ing to and inhab­it­ing a space over mul­tiple hours or days. A repeated time struc­ture, a tem­por­al loop that is altered through upwardly evolving ration­ally-tuned fre­quen­cies, vari­ous flutes (whose size, timbre and shape cor­res­pond to these fre­quen­cies), elec­tron­ics, and chan­ging light, the piece cre­ates a subtle space where per­cep­tion is transformed.

Rebecca Lane: flutes, organ pipes, whistles
Clara de Asís: synthesizer

Rebecca Lane & Clara de Asís / Distances Bending (Excerpt) – Live at Oscillation 2023

Optimo live from The Beach Stage at Love International 2023. 

First 3 hours of their 6 hour set on the Beach.

Live from the Adriatic 2023: Optimo

Recording of Optimo's All Night Long Set at Club Zukunft in March 2023.

@https://on.soundcloud.com/T7D2t
@https://on.soundcloud.com/9et3e

Optimo at Club Zukunft - 25.03.2023 - Part 1

Destiny is a piece made from electronic audio materials created on an analog modular synthesizer following simple processes on signal treatment and the choice of a restrict palette as an aesthetic constraint, while keeping both an overall organic expressivity and a slightly des-articulated quality at the edge of compositional agency.

Variations and antecedents of this piece have been performed live in various electronic music festivals and events. The definitive version is a part of Sisbiosis, a collaborative album put together with the artist and musician Ryoko Akama, released in 2022 on Erstwhile records (US).

https://erstwhilerecords.bandcamp.com/album/sisbiosis

Destiny (Excerpt)

J D Twitch in the pocket for Sameheads resident party Perfumed Garden --- 

Put ogether by honey bunnys Bad Boy Baader & Electric Evelyn.

Cheers Keith x

Basement Parties

J D Twitch (Optimo) - Perfumed Garden @ Sameheads 19.04.24

"La cassette noire" was originally self-released in 1982 as a limited edition of 200 cassettes packaged in a black plastic bag including 
a 11 pages black & white photocopied booklet (see enclosed jpg). 

It contains nine tracks recorded at home (except "K.G." and "Revol Dub" recorded and mixed by Philippe David at Studio Séquence, Paris). 

All tracks lyrics and music, Thierry Damerval, Christophe Demarthe, Nicolas Demarthe 

Vocals, Christophe Demarthe 
Guitar, Keyboards, Nicolas Demarthe 
Bass, Keyboards, Voice, Thierry Damerval 
Drums, Jean-Yves Liot 

Cover design, Clair Obscur 
Drawing adapted from Edvard Munch, "The Scream" 
Texts and images, rights reserved 

Re-released in 1985 by Pleasantly Surprised (UK) as a cassette packaged in a transparent plastic bag including a badge.

Pessimiste Combattif

Among all groups which animated the French Cold Wave and Industrial scene of the 80s, Clair Obscur is certainly one of those which radiated furthest outside the boundaries of France. Several of their records have been published by British labels like All the Madmen (the live The Pilgrim’s Progress, 1986) or Cathexis Recordings (the 12" single Smurf in the Gulag, the same year), and one of their act of glory is to be part of the compilation From Torture To Conscience of the mythical label N.E.R. alongside with Current 93, In The Nursery or Death In June (1984). From Killing Joke to The Nits, from Le Cirque d’Hiver de Paris (1982) to the Wiener Festwochen (1991), the bands with which they played, and the venues and places that they performed are a fantastic testimony to the richness of this group which is so difficult to classify. Founded in Creil in 1981 by Thierry Damerval (bass guitar), Christophe (vocals) et Nicolas Demarthe (guitar), Clair Obscur drew immediately attention with a home made audio tape (re-released on the album Play), a 7" single magnificently designed (Santa Maria) and several 12" singles. From the most tribal cold wave to chamber music, from industrial music to dance music (unless these two are synonymous), their musical approach is eminently atmospheric and embraces a surprising variety of styles, giving birth to iconoclastic scenic transcriptions. By recreating a domestic place on stage or by organizing a fake TV game, Clair Obscur explore universes close to theatre or performance, which can be found in In Out, published in 1988 on V.I.S.A. with the help of France Culture. After the releases of the albums Sans titre, 1992, Rock (1994) and Nulle Aide… (recorded under the name CO2, for "Clair Obscur 2nd Generation", in 1999), the end of the 90s saw the group hibernate. Christophe Demarthe mainly worked on his project Cocoon, an ambitious multimedia work released on Optical Sound. Since March 2004, Clair Obscur has been reactivated by Nicolas and Christophe Demarthe, and their albums Play and In Out (...) re-released by the label Infrastition. 
David Sanson

David Sanson is a journalist and a musician. The text above is an excerpt of the booklet of the CD compilation Echo Location, on the French scene of the 80's, published by Optical Sound in 2005.

Pessimiste Combattif

CLAIR OBSCUR

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