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)

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

Bucky Skank is my hobby. I've loved Jamaican and Jamaican inspired / influenced music for nearly my whole musical life. I don't consider myself an expert in any way but over the years I have amassed quite a lot of this music and it is one of a very few forms of music I can listen to all day without getting bored.

I have played about a half dozen full sets of this music and it has been like learning how to dj all over again. All those sets had a slightly shambolic edge to them as I found my feet but have been wonderful, if nerve wracking fun as I scrambled in the dark to find the right 7" to play next. It's definitely not something I'd like to do all the time but doing it one or two times a year is a true joy, so a big thanks to those who have come along and danced. 

There is also the Bucky Skank label, again very much a hobby which releases a couple of 12"s each year (the first one now sold out, the second one due shortly).

Anyway, here's a two hour mix featuring some of what I played at this year's Bucky Skank in Glasgow. Half of it was recorded on the night and half after the fact, at home. Hopefully the joins aren't too noticeable. A tiny handful of the tracks were on the mix I put up a couple of years ago (The Upsetters' "Bucky Skank" will of course appear in every Bucky Skank set I do and bookends this mix albeit in different versions). if you are looking for totally obscure, ultra rare Jamaican music, this is probably not for you but if you want to hear some of the myriad sounds that have come out of that small island or that it has inspired, hopefully it will be enjoyable; plenty of hits and lots of personal favourites from across 50 years (1964 - 2014), ranging from Barrington Levy, Bim Sherman, Prince Far I and Tenor Saw to Kahn, Cutty Ranks and Lady Saw.

The mix is "augmented" with my dub siren, some space echo and Maschine being used to trigger some additional sounds and samples.

The mix is a little over two hours long, is a downloadable 256kbps mp3 and is 230mb.

JD Twitch - Bucky Skank 2014 mix (NOT for laptop speakers)

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

These 'Super Duty Tough Work' selections were put together for an abandoned radio show I was doing for an unworthy platform that shall remain unnamed. They don't deserve, nor can they handle the sonics within.

Brian Not Brian Presents: Super Duty Tough Work No.1

Pop Pickers

Live and direct from the sound room for the Rhythm Section takeover of public records
NYC: Saturday 31st May 2025

Bradley Zero live Public Records May 2025

Part 2 of my Magic Waves, Berlin set. I had a sense that by this point in the night the crowd were, uh, feelin' kinda high, so it maybe reflects that a bit. It's a tad more all over the place and a little less doomy than the first part.

JD Twitch Live at Magic Waves Summer Festival, Berlin 2015 (Part 2 - So High set)

The full version of the text below can be read here - thequietus.com/articles/22925-optimo-20-mix-listen

As well as 2017 being the 20th anniversary of Optimo it is also 30 years since I started DJ’ing, in Edinburgh in the summer of 1987.

It had never crossed my mind to be a DJ and I fell into it quite by accident. Myself and several friends were devoted attendees at a sub basement club in Edinburgh’s Cowgate called The Backroom that started in 1986. It was the first club where we truly felt at home musically and that was frequented by people we felt comfortable being around. The resident DJs, Bill & Bobby, had been playing around Edinburgh for years and had phenomenal taste and abilities to play exactly the right records in the right order at the right time. After a year or so of religiously attending, my good friend Macky noticed a poster announcing they were looking to audition people to play the first two hours of the night. Macky suggested we audition and initially I point blank refused, partly because the idea terrified me and partly because it held little appeal to me at that time. He persisted and eventually I agreed being fairly confident that our total lack of experience would be so apparent that we would never get the gig. Over the next few weeks they auditioned various people by letting them play the start of the night and somehow we were picked to be the new warm up DJs. Yikes!

So began an uninterrupted trend of being part of a DJ duo, and every Saturday night I would get the bus through from Glasgow where I had now moved to study and Macky and I would take turns to play a few records each to a generally completely disinterested audience. Our fee for playing was £25 and I would get £15 as I had to travel through from Glasgow and Macky took a tenner. Once I realised how much I was enjoying doing it I would have happily played for free.

So, what was I playing back then? Well, I kept quite a detailed diary in those days and would write down the records I played each week. From those diary entries I have put together a mix of what I might have played in my first ever set had I had the technical knowledge or ability to actually be a mixing DJ at that time. Though the music played was very diverse, we were all particularly into records with advanced production that sounded state of the art at the time and we used the term Electrobeat to describe the core sound that we were really into. The term didn’t catch on and neither did the music. The club was very popular but the people who came generally did not like weird records they did not know, were quite averse to drum machines and I’d often hear people grumbling about us playing “that drum machine crap”, a scenario which is of course in complete reversal 30 years on.

So, here are 30 tracks mixed together that were the sound of my late teenage years that I tried to turn people on to 30 years ago. Most of the records in this mix would lie dormant on my shelves for the next 20 years but in the last 10 years or so a surprising number have found their way back into my sets and finally found an appreciative audience and sound as good, if not better today than they did 30 years ago.

There is no tracklisting but I don’t think there is anything wildly obscure or rare in the mix. I could have pretended I was playing lots of lesser known records back then, but this is a 100% genuine round up of what I was actually playing in 1987. The two tracks without a drum machine are the only ones which were anything like bonafide dancefloor hits for me at The Backroom at the time. I have also included one (loop from a) track my then co-DJ, Macky used to play lots and also a Bill & Bobby classic. The mix is available to download as a 320 mp3. For a bit of bonus fun I have included one track that wasn’t released until 1988. If anyone can identify which one it is they will win a prize.

JD Twitch - 1987 reimagined (30 year anniversary mix)

Hot on the heels of podcast 13 comes this one to celebrate 50 years of Jamaican independence. It was recorded live at the Sub Club, Glasgow on Sunday 29th July 2012 and is an edit of the 4 hours of Jamaican music played that night. Twitch did a one off night of all Jamaican music in 2011, that time only playing 7" singles and had so much fun that we decided to make it an annual event, this time allowing a few 12"s and album tracks in there and giving the night a name - Bucky Skank - named after a Lee "Scratch" Perry song. There is a very popular fortified wine on the West coast of Scotland called Buckfast that is known locally as Buckie so it seemed the perfect name. Twitch will also be launching a Bucky Skank record label soon to release his and others takes on Jamaican dancehall. It won't be a very prolific label.

Alongside the records there was a Roland Space Echo, a dub siren, a very old percussion synthesiser and Maschine, used to trigger various sounds and vocal samples. JD Twitch was playing the records and triggering the samples while JG Wilkes was operating the Space Echo, dub siren and percussion synth. Listening back, we probably overdid the sirens and bleeps in places, but hey, it sounded good on the night. 

Musically it is all over the place and spans 50 years of Jamaican (and British-Jamaican) music but not in any chronological or even logical order. Reggae purists may well be horrified, but whatever, it was one of the best nights we put on all year. I got to play so many records I adore and the atmosphere in The Sub Club was fantastic, bringing in a lot of people who had probably never set foot in the club in their lives before. There were a lot of big smiles all night. Normally when I finish a dj set I am quite wired but after playing this music for 4 hours with only a quick bolt to the toilet mid way I was incredibly relaxed (as were all the staff in the club). Rastafarians believe Reggae is the music to bring world peace and unite mankind and even my in built cynicism finds that hard to argue with.

You'll probably notice it starts off quite quietly and gets louder. This is simply due to the volume being turned up as the night went on and we thought it better to leave it how it was rather than mastering the audio. Mixing wise, well, there are a lot of crashing segues and some minimal mixing but this was most certainly a case of a night where the music was far more important than any technical prowess. Give me another ten years of doing this annually and maybe it will all be semi-seamlessly mixed.

I'll end on a controversial note. Over the years I've lost count of the number of times I've heard people say they hate Reggae or that when I've played a single Reggae song in a set it has ruined their night. Apart from "hate" being quite an extreme emotion to direct at music I've always been bewildered how anyone can dismiss an entire nation's music that is so varied, joyous and original and whose DNA has become woven into so much other music, especially here in the UK. Just as I'm always suspicious of anyone who is a Tory I'm suspicious of anyone who can "hate" the entire musical output of Jamaica. Either they haven't been listening very deeply or possibly there is a fundamental flaw in their musical soul?

Almost every track on this podcast was played from vinyl. Jamaican record pressings can be a little bit poor on occasion so there are a few tracks with quite low fidelity and the odd skipping record here and there. As usual we aren't making a track listing available for the podcast, simply because we feel that knowing the contents often precludes actually listening to it. But, if you want to know what anything is, feel free to get in touch and we will let you know. The mix is a 320kbps mp3 (330mb) and is 135 minutes long.

Optimo Podcast 14 - Bucky Skank (Jamaica 50) Live At The Sub Club, Glasgow

Slightly edited NTS Show from 30/06/20. Available to download.

if you enjoy this (and other mixes i upload), please consider donating to -

Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER) is a Scottish strategic racial equality charity, based in Glasgow who are focused on working to eliminate racial discrimination and harassment and promote racial justice across Scotland. Read more at  - www.crer.scot. Direct donate at - https://www.crer.scot/about-crer 

Positive Housing In Action is an anti-racist refugee and migrant homelessness charity working together with social landlords, non profits and others to enable families and individuals to rebuild their lives, and promote refugee friendly communities. Read more at - www.paih.org Direct donate at - https://www.paypal.com/uk/fundraiser/charity/133777

Thank you.

Pop Pickers

TJ NOAKES

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