During 2021, to help get through the ongoing lockdown I made a series of 90 minute cassette tapes, one a month for ten months. I thought there would be a small demand but was blown away by the response. People really embraced them and copies went to every corner of the planet. They became a huge part of my year and really helped me through a tough time.

A little later I made them available digitally for a short period and all the proceeds raised went to Glasgow NW Foodbank. I was again blown away as thousands of pounds were raised.

I have decided to put the series on Soundcloud. I'll upload them sporadically over the coming months. I'm skipping the 2nd one as it has the same title as a compilation I put out recently and I don't want the two getting confused, but I may come back to it later. This is the 3rd one titled “SMI²LE - Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension".

Smi²le was Timothy Leary’s mid 70s vision of the future of humanity. It's Utopian & in hindsight wildly optimistic. He believed we would have colonised space & have cloned ourselves by around the year 2000. He envisaged millions of us would be living in “High orbital mini Earths” in our own small Utopian communities. I have a long time fascination with (unrealisable) Utopian communities and Smi²le has always been one I particularly liked as it was so fully thought out & even by Utopian standards wildly hopeful & unrealistic. It's also relevant to our times as contentious/ awful figures like Peter Thiel & Elon Musk have adopted the worst parts of these ideas without any public scrutiny. Free market space migration may not be a positive thing, particularly if we are exporting this planet’s problems into outer space.

Anyway, that’s an aside and it’s basically a 90 minute space themed mix of music. Understanding / knowing about the Smi²le concept is not essential to its enjoyment. :)

Tape released May 7, 2021

Artwork – Musheto Fernandez.

JD Twitch - SMI²LE (Optimo Music Tape 003 - originally released May 2021)

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/