null neun| zwanzig

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

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

IntergalacticFM-Disco Fetish at NAR Utrecht 21.03.25

Intergalactic Gary - Disco Fetish @ NAR-21.03.25

Trushmix 241 presents Darcy Mahady the avid record collector and DJ originally from Australia now a resident of Berlin. A now decade long foray into the world of DJing has seen Darcy share music all over the world. Calling Berlin home since 2022, he can equally be found taking care of music in one of the city’s smoked out dive bars, helping host weekly coppi sessions or throwing parties under the lately banner.

For Trush he made a 1 hour and 38 minutes mix of house music with a touch of electro and some elements of Italo in the mix! Deep moods and grooves some UK, NY and Detroit classic rollin' it hard! Mix it mix it flix it flix it!

Music from the top!
Enjoy the mix!


Trushmix 241 - Darcy Mahady

Next up for Viscera 133, we're delighted to welcome our very good pal Rosie Ama to the series!

"London-based DJ, radio host and label owner Rosie Ama operates in the outer fringes of dance music, slinging her sleazy cocktail of low-slung chuggers, leftfield house and synth-driven grooves in basements, bars, fields and clubs across the UK and beyond.

Having cut her teeth as a writer and editor for online music platforms Stamp The Wax and Ransom Note, Rosie went on to form Kiara Scuro in 2016 with her friend Nadia - a DJ and production duo with releases for the likes of fabric originals, Ritmo Fatale and Faux Poly, as well as long-standing radio residencies on Rinse FM and Balamii Radio.

After a decade together, Rosie has now turned her focus to her solo project and the trippy sonics that first ignited her passion for DJing, and continue to guide the output of her record label, Human Endeavour. Home to artists like Anastasia Zems, Justine Forever, Nandele, Medicine 8 and Thomass Jackson. 

As another outlet to share her musical discoveries, Rosie hosts a bi-monthly radio show on Bristol’s Noods Radio called Melodic Odds, which showcases the music she listens to away from the club."

For today’s mix, we’ve got a recording from Rosie’s warm up set for Optimo at Phonox, recorded on the 21st June 2025. A proper journey through the sounds she’s best known for.

Keep it locked and enjoy! 

@rosie-ama-cain

Photo Credit - Nick George

Rosie Ama [Live at Phonox] | 133

I-F b2b Intergalactic Gary at Time is the New Space for Intergalactic FM XXL Summer Edition.

Bookings I-F | Beverly Hills 808303, Intergalactic Gary and Intergalactic FM club and festival hostings: carlos@pontoonbookings.com

I-F b2b Intergalactic Gary at Intergalactic FM XXL Summer Edition 09.08.25

Amsterdam selector Orpheu The Wizard connects oddball and straight forward jams from different decades and different record shelves in a monthly show.  
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/orpheu-the-wizard/episodes/orpheu-the-wizard-8th-august-2025

Orpheu The Wizard 080825

Vladimir Ivkovic b2b Sean Johnston live from The Olive Grove at Love International festival 2025

Live from the Adriatic 2025: Vladimir Ivkovic b2b Sean Johnston

Caution (Toppers Edit)

20 years later...

In recent times there has been a lot of looking back to the early 1990s in house music which made me curious about what my dj sets actually sounded like back then. As it's 20 years on I thought it might be fun to put one up as an Optimo podcast, but sadly I had no recordings of that time as I had long given away or lost any tapes i had from then (everything was on cheap C90 cassette tapes in those days). Then, last week a local producer sent me his album to peruse and mentioned that he had a couple of mix tapes of mine, both from 1991.

So, here is a genuine 1991 mix recorded in that year when I was co-resident at Pure in Edinburgh (which ran from 1990 - 2000) when i was known simply as Twitch rather than JD Twitch (the JD was added many years later to stop people billing me as DJ Twitch, which I loathed).

Although I started djing in 1987, I didn't start mixing records together until 1990 and couldn't afford turntables until the end of that year, so initially when i was djing at Pure I was literally learning on the job. Thankfully the euphoria of those times coupled with the fact it was all so new and exciting to so many meant that I got away with it as audiences were a lot more forgiving than they are today. Requests were fairly rare and usually a lot more oblique, often along the lines of "Can you play some "E" music?" Heckling or shouting "come on!', "harder!", "techno!" was non existent. it wasn't a better time, just different, but audiences in general were a bit politer and more patient.

This mix is two sides of two different C90 cassettes stuck together. The first half is from late 1991. It has a lot of that "E" music people were asking for on it. The mixing ranges from pretty good to the odd "ouch" moment but overall is not bad for a beginner. The second half is from earlier in 1991 and the mixing is a lot more, uh, "freeform" and gets through a high number of tracks in a short time. I think this section may have been recorded live at Pure although I can't be sure as despite running for ten years we only ever made a tiny number of live recordings. There are a couple of massively cheesy and seriously dated rave anthems on here and a couple of tracks I have absolutely no recollection of ever having heard in my life, but there is also a lot of music that I still play to this day and indeed have never stopped playing since, and some, such as MK's "Burning", Mike Perras and CLS that are enduring classics. To use the parlance of back in the day, the mix gets a little "mental" towards the end. The tape begins with a live recording of a bit of chat from the Ragga Twins live at Pure in early 1991 and ends with a particularly twisted take on David Lynch's "Lady In The Radiator Song" followed by a blast of Throbbing Gristle. Sometimes I'd drop in things like that at Pure which maybe helps explain why a few regulars ended up with mental health issues! Pure had a reputation for being a techno club and in the early days a temple to all things rave but it was always a lot more than that (as well as those things too of course) as this podcast demonstrates. Despite the sound (and mixing) limitations I think it's an interesting document of what was going on in my world 20 years ago. 


The audio fidelity of this podcast is not high, particularly in the second half. The original cassette tape was probably copied multiple times as it was passed around from person to person. Richard Chisolm who excavated the tapes has done some remastering to improve the sound but old multi generation tapes rarely sound good and it was probably quite lo fi to begin with. It was mixed live using a cheap mixer through a cheap amp. Back then the vast majority of dj mixers were very basic - no eq, no gain and no gizmos whatsoever; just a volume fader, a crossfader and phono / line switches which I used to flick to cut tracks in and out. The mix is 85 minutes long and is a 192kbps mp3 (118mb). 

Thanks to Richard aka Restless Native.
 

Optimo Podcast 11 - Twitch 1991 (recorded in 1991)

This Was Belgium 1987-89 - 2 hours of New Beat favourites

New Beat was born and initially exploded in 1987, went supernova (in Belgium) in 1988 and then the formula morphed a bit and was declared dead in 1989. It was slow and initially all about the atmosphere with industrial strength beats - the main form of rhythmic propulsion being the pounding kick and heavy snare. It was often mainly instrumental and when there was lyrical content it often became more about slogans and giving commands - "Move Your Ass And Feel The Beat!", "Let There Be Brightness!", "Shout Out Loud!". While not really New Beat, it's no surprise Technotronic's "Pump Up Jam" was produced by a crew who had produced a ton of New Beat gems.

In 1989 one of New Beat's founders, Marc Grouls said "New Beat is atmosphere, beats, no lyrics, and sure as hell not commercial!!!!!" But, it was already too late. A zillion bandwagon jumpers had diluted the music and flooded the market with too many sub standard 12" singles. New Beat temple, the legendary Boccaccio nightclub, in Destelbergen, near Ghent, had been closed down and it looked like it was all over, but really, it was just the beginning. New Beat morphed into Hard Beat (many of the tracks on this mix are from the Hard Beat era) which quickly morphed into Belgian Rave, which was huge and hugely influential in the UK and is an often overlooked part of the DNA of UK Hardcore, and all that came after. Then from Ghent, R&S Records established itself as thee European Techno label and a huge wave of incredible Techno records emanated from it and many other mighty Belgian labels, but that is another story. 

New Beat arrived just as I first started DJing and I played a lot of it in my DJ sets and built up connections with several of the leading Belgian labels who would send me 12" singles so I had records nobody else here had any idea even existed. I would compile New Beat charts for the music paper The NME which may have given the impression there was a thriving New Beat scene in Scotland. The reality was very different; people here, many of whom would embrace the rave just a little while later never really took to it in a big way.

This mix is comprised of many of my personal favourites that I have loved since they came out (and two I missed at the time and only heard later). I think the tracks have aged like a fine wine, often sounding as good if not better today as they did then. There is definitely a faint whiff of fromage and a big dollop of stoopid in several of these tracks. Of course, it is not all about the cheese and many of these adhere to the "atmosphere, beats, no lyrics, and sure as hell not commercial" rule mentioned above. Some of the best programmed 303 Acid basslines ever made can be heard here along with transcendental hypno synths and those Belgian beats going on and on....! Slow and low, from under 100bpm up to 116, New Beat doesn't chug, it swings in a very distinct way. If you get to see any videos of Belgian clubs of the era, the way people moved to this music is incredible and so different to any dancing we see today.

Many of these tracks are made by the same people under various aliases, which will perhaps be audibly evident. Most of the names have been forgotten, if they were ever even known outside their native Belgium at all, but all are legends to me. 

This mix isn't any kind of attempt to tell the story of New Beat but rather a mix 33 of my favourite 12" singles from that era showing many of the various strains of the New Beat and Hard Beat sound. A lot of love went into this and I hope someone somewhere discovers this music for the first time and falls in love with it as I did way back when. This was Belgium!

This Was Belgium 1987-89 - 2 hours of New Beat favourites

new mix for august

1  Acid Hamam - Djin of Death - Disco dub 
2 Yacht - Downtown Dancing - Peaking Lights instrumental mix 
3 Kezokichi - Nahnah 
4 Yuksek - Bateu - CLAAP remix
5 Franz Scala - Stelle
6 Rework - Come on - 2020 re-edit 
7 Rotciv - Number of Names
8 Leonor - El Chapulin
9 Javier Martinez - Chaos City - Ed Dix remix - Forthcoming on Nein 
10 DJ T. - Bedouin Ride - Theus Mago remix
11 Viper Patrol - Transendance - Disco Morato Revision - Forthcoming on Nein 
12 Disco Morato - Discesa - Gegen Mann remix - Forthcoming on Nein 
13 Roliva - Credus - Gegen Mann Bunker remix 
14 Out of the Ordinary - The Dream - Fabrizio Mammarella edit
15 Javier Ferreira - Bouncing - Cardopusher Remix
16 Plastico - Ghetto House

Tronik Youth - August 2020 Mix

Summer PIDR session 
Tracklist 

1. Horizon Two Twenty Two - A Midsummer Nights Dream (Titania mix)
2. Ricco - Layla
3. Basic - Sham
4. Reymour - Léon
5. Houschyar - Lamassu
6. Shiver - Full Circle (Industrial Float Tank Dub)
7. The Prophets - Wallenburg
8. Vactrol Park - Don't Speak Its Name 
9. 横田進 (Yokota Susumu) - Akafuji
10. Black Merlin - Textured Land 
11. Rrose - Columns
12. Angstlust - Gebrochene Gestalten
13. Coil - 2nd Son Syndrome
14. Junto Club - Hercules

PIDR 8th August 2020

Roe Deers is a Lithuanian-based producer aka Liudas Lazauskas. Liudas started listening to electronic music when I was 10 year old. Being 11 year old, he got a turntable and a mixer, he started collecting vinyls and practiced my mixing technique at my parents nightclub. Eventually, he started playing at club venues in Lithuania, few years after - across the Europe. Then he began my music story and let the music do the talking. He have enthralled the nights of endless audiences in the many clubs in Europe by delivering well blended electronic music.

Having spent more than 15 years behind the turntables performing at clubs and produced electronic music, Liudas became significantly well equipped with rich musical knowledge across many genres of electronic music. While most of the electronic music follows a clear and often monotonic pattern, you never know what you will get from Roe Deers. The way how he would describe my sound would be “From old-school style up to disco and from soulful to deep new wave - combination of disco, rock & house”. It really does vary.

Roe Deers employ all shades of love in his shows so that the only response you can give him is dance.

https://soundcloud.com/roedeers

LAYER #239 | Roe Deers

Space commander @maxbuchalik hails from Berlin and loves to please you with tight dark disco tunes. Enjoy the ride!

MAX BUCHALIK: SPÆCIAL MIX 190

Interview with Tushen Rai > http://bit.ly/InterviewTushenRai
> IN DARK WE TRUST:
Soundcloud > bit.ly/IDWTSoundcloud
Youtube > bit.ly/IDWTYoutube

For tracklist contact:
TUSHEN RAI
- https://soundcloud.com/tushen_rai
- https://www.facebook.com/TushenRai
- https://www.instagram.com/tushen_rai

Free DOWNLOAD

Tushen Rai - IN DARK WE TRUST #44

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/

This Was Belgium 1987-89 - 2 hours of New Beat favourites

JD Twitch

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