Rest in Power Keith you put me onto Muslimgauze that was your energy - a real dj turning people onto DIFFERENT / difficult music and sometimes also pop too ! Musics not for everyone as wevvers said but you got people into all kinds of music …

Optimo

Live from Radio80000 Munich. Monday, Sept. 11, 2023 

Recent faves, shares, discoveries

*Xtra tnx to Benny and Jannis

Gates of Sincerity

En vivo para el take over de Honest Allies por Palestina - todos los fondos del evento recaudados para Médicos Sin Fronteras México. 22 de junio 2024 @ Relink:Data studio. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpyMW8flMDQ&t=2062s

NAP Live @ RelinkData: Honest Allies Takeover

@boursin
A recording of fka boursin's set at Opera Sunday last January (2024), under the disco ball in Spanners 7-9pm before Lucien 

One from deeper in the archive, it's been 16 months since this happened. 

Sharing this marks the beginning of a timeline of releases from previous Opera Sunday parties spanning the last year before the next event on the 18th May.

fka boursin @ Opera Sunday - Spanners LDN [28.01.24]

A rare club mix from the ever-evolving artist, with 90 minutes of shadowy, atmospheric pressure.

Music's therapeutic value is often linked to relaxation—gongs, singing bowls and the like. Dense passages of foggy droning and eerie static aren't traditionally considered restorative, but Laurel Halo makes a pretty good case for it.

The Detroit-born, Los Angeles-based musician's abstract, often improvised productions are heavy on sound design and emotional climax. Driven by atmosphere rather than rhythm, they push listeners to grapple with their innermost insecurities, fears and dreams. "I'm lucky my music has helped people through crises," Halo once told Discwoman. It's easy to see why.

Since her 2010 debut King Felix, Halo has built a stunningly diverse catalogue of classically-informed records. A multi-instrumentalist—piano, violin, guitar, keys—her sharpest instrument is arrangement. Inspired by the surrealism of Italo Calvino and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, her releases, from Atlas to Behind The Green Door, unfold with slow-burning narrative and dense emotional weight. Her soundworlds are layered and labyrinthine—an architectonic space where self-reflection happens almost by force.

Even in the club, the sought-after composer excels in immersion. Her sets extend the expressionist palette of her records, trading traditional rhythm for tension, space and surprise. It’s no wonder she takes a genre-agnostic approach to the dance floor—her deep roots in freeform radio began at WCBN-FM in Michigan, followed by Berlin Community Radio, Rinse FM, and now a regular show on NTS.

RA.992 stitches foggy ambient loops, propulsive techno, mutant percussion and heady left turns with care. Tracks from DJ Rush, Octave One and Eddie Fowlkes nod to her Midwestern heritage, balanced out by deeper, psychedelic fare from the likes of Polygonia and Cousin. It's the mark of an artist revealing both deep curiosity and a precise hand as a selector. Rare, indeed.

@laurelhalo

Find the full interview at ra.co/podcast/992

RA.992 Laurel Halo

Nosedrip at Garage, Horst Arts & Music 2025

The breezy sound of the Canadian Riviera, from Mood Hut's Pender Street Steppers.  
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/pender-street-steppers/episodes/pender-street-steppers-24th-june-2025

Pender Street Steppers w/ Space Ghost  240625

INTERVIEW + MIX > https://inverted-audio.com/mix/eden-aurelius

For the 393rd edition of the Inverted Audio Mix Series, we are thrilled to present an hour-long sonic journey from @edenaurelius. Currently based in New York, Eden’s spent many years immersed in the DIY and club scenes of NYC and Chicago, her previous home before relocating two years ago.

Last year’s debut ‘Pleateau’ was one of our favourite releases of 2024. A potent mixture of ambient and dub techno, ‘Pleateau’ has only gotten better in the spin around the sun since it was released. It hooks you in with its unhurried rhythms that pulse with a vibrant spirit. The album feels like a welcome time out from the anxieties of constant connections and endless news cycles.

Along with recent output by Purelink (who are friends and collaborators), Eden’s work feels like an essential new chapter in the long, winding story of ambient dub. As Summer takes control, we caught up with Eden to talk about her musical beginnings, all time and current favourite albums, and upcoming projects.

Read

IA MIX 393 Eden Aurelius

Recorded on Wiradjuri land, NSW
Sunday 3pm - 5pm

@emelyne-khor
https://www.instagram.com/extr.emelyne/

Emelyne at Soma Festival 2024

A section from my set at Magic Waves Summer Festival, Berlin, July 2015,  featuring the more accessible synth end of the kind of stuff I play at my occasional So Low night in Glasgow. So Low 2 x LP compilation in hand screen printed sleeve coming February 2016 via Vinyl Factory.

JD Twitch Live at Magic Waves Summer Festival, Berlin 2015 (Part 1 - So Low Synth NRG set)

as featured on both:

Tuesday 9pm - Midnight (EDT) | On WFMU | 91.1, 90.1, 91.9 FM
Freaking Out with Kendraplex: Playlist from January 20, 2025
Extra dimensions are old hat. Now each vibe is a Pokémon, wwyd? Agitation classics, spiritual chaos, noise genre, drone excerpts, tone worship, safe & sane record warping. Music! Every media format! Incoming and outgoing phone calls! Voicemail, audio attachments, reading your horoscopes thru a tasteful amount of delay. For the people.

Flotation Device 2021-08-01 - New creative music

Great music from multiple continents: composed, improvised and fixed media—for Western and non-Western, and even medieval, instruments. We start out with new albums from Evan Parker and the transcultural septet Karkhana. We also sample a newly-rediscovered Cecil Taylor big band gig from 1990, relating it to the new Francisco Mela/Matthew Shipp/William Parker trio album. Syrphe's Cedrik Fermont & Seattle’s St Celfer offer avant-electronica, while Stefano Gervasoni & Nina C. Young send prerecorded memories through special loudspeakers mounted to a piano soundboard and a snare drum head. The Albuquerque-based duo Endlings joins with Marshall Trammell for a strange blend of rock, free improv & loop music, while Sharon Bezaly & the Royal Scottish play Ye, Ilya Gringolts plays Holliger, and Catalina Vicens plays Boondiskulchok on a portative organ. Creative & improvised music from the Northwest and around the world with host Michael Schell.

Bandcamp

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)

Read the feature: https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2815

JD Twitch (Optimo) live warmup - Sub Club In Residence mix

Live dj mix of Muslimgauze music recorded at Unsound, Krakow, October 22nd 2016. Apart from the occasional use of some FX, this is 100% the music of Muslimgauze with nothing added. Any glitches, distortions, weird audio anomalies, dramatic changes in volume etc. are all part of Muslimguaze’s unique production process. Available to download as a 320 mp3.

Tracklist -

The Taliban

Eleven Minarets Part 10

Arab Jerusalem

Tozeur Palm

Choke Noose Of Gold Silk

Bandit Queen

Noose Of Gold Silk

Azeri Jab

Azzazin 1

Zindabad

Bazoft Rope

Ishmael Tongue

Herod-1

Free From A Veil

Untitled 1985

Purdah Zealot

Azzazin 6

An Abyssinian Who Could Kiss Fine

Khan Younis

Negative Of Ethiopia

The Eternal Illusionist Of Old Baghdad

Baghdad

Najibullah Headless

JD Twitch plays Muslimgauze, Unsound, Krakow 22/10/2016

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)

JD Twich is one half of Optimo, the legendary Glasgow party and a label. Some time ago he launched a new imprint called Against Fascism Trax, attempt to “provoke dialogue that is fundamentally anti-racist, anti-sexist, non-homophobic, non transphobic, non-ageist and non-ableist”. This podcast is a two-hour segment of this set at Hotel Forum's Kitchen from Unsound 2019. Before the performance, JD Twitch said of his Unsound set: “This will be the first ever presentation of an Against Fascism Trax DJ set, an experiment in whether music can convey an intent non verbally.” Starting the set and threaded throughout is the Italian protest song "Bella ciao", which originated in the late 19th century as a working-class anthem and was adopted as a hymn of the anti-fascist resistance in the 1940s. The song takes on new meaning in the current pandemic, as the need for new forms of solidarity — with health workers, cleaners and sanitation workers, impoverished people and all manner of vulnerable populations — becomes urgently clear.

Unsound Podcast 64: JD Twitch - "Against Fascism Trax"

I started DJ'ing in 1987, am 50% of Optimo (Espacio) and I also run the Optimo Music record label.


“We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”
Mark Vonnegut

Email - kmcivor@me.com

Optimo Music Soundcloud here - https://soundcloud.com/optimo-music

DJ bookings (worldwide) - caroline@spunoutagency.com



Press - optimopr@mac.com


Discography - http://www.optimo.co.uk/discography/

JD Twitch plays Muslimgauze, Unsound, Krakow 22/10/2016

JD Twitch

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