Optimo

Final hour of Optimo residency at Sub Club

Gloria Jones – Tainted Love
Vitalic Vs Peaches – LA Rock Show
Sparks – Beat The Clock
A Homeboy A Hippie & A Funky Dred – Total Confusion
Westbam (With Nena) – Oldschool, Baby (Piano Mix)
The Turtles – Happy Together
Chris Isaak – Wicked Game (Trentemoller’s Businessman Dubby Games Remix)
Blondie – Atomic
Sylvester – Do You Wanna Funk?
The Doors / Merzbow – The End / Woodpecker No. 2 (Merzbow?)
Dinosaur L – Kiss Me Again
The Joubert Singers – Stand On The Word
Ben E. King Stand By Me
**The Final 15 Minutes!!**
Divine – Shake It Up
Liquid Liquid – Optimo
Ike & Tina Turner – Come Together
Warner Brothers – End Credits With Porky Pig
Nina Simone – Feeling
Good Chuck Wood – Seven Days Is Too Long

Optimo Optimogeddon Part 5

As some people seem to have problems accessing our podcasts, i'm going to put this up here too. A shorter version of this podcast is here - http://soundcloud.com/warmhq/jd-twitch-optimo-bass-and-bleeps

-----------------

Blurb -


In the late 80s as house music exploded across the UK British producers started to take the new electronic strains coming out of the United States and added their own distinctive British twist to them. Artists such as Bang The Party, No Smoke, Baby Ford, Renegade Soundwave and A Guy Called Gerald amongst many others were releasing distinctive records that worked on the dance floor as effectively as anything coming out of Chicago, New York or Detroit. Then there was Unique 3. From Bradford, they were arguably the first UK act to really bring the BASS and in particular the sub bass to UK electronic music in a way that it hadn't featured before. Britain's deep affinity with reggae and the exposure of many to severely bass heavy reggae sound systems meant it was an inevitability that bass was going to become a distinctive factor and Unique 3's huge (and sadly somewhat forgotten) influence on what came out of the UK cannot be understated: hardcore, drum and bass, dubstep and current UK Bass variants all owe something to Unique 3's bassprints, several of which are included on this podcast. (The earliest, The Theme, dates back to 1989 and still sounds fresh 22 years later.)

In their wake, from the north of England came Warp records and the wave of Sheffield Bass, or Bass and Bleep records (or whatever you want to call them) that begat a thousand imitators.  Once again an often overlooked character is majorly responsible for so much of this music - the mighty Rob Gordon (co founder of Warp and remixer and producer extraordinaire), whom to me is as important a figure in dance music history as any legend one may care to mention. These records had a massive impact on myself and my then dj partner Brainstorm. We were obsessed with bleeps and bass and these futuristic sounds that sounded unlike anything else, especially when blasting out of a huge sound system. We were very fortunate that our club night UFO, which soon morphed into Pure, had possibly the most powerful system in the country. When the bass drop in LFO's "LFO" came in the whole building would quiver and the music would be drowned out by shrieks and screams of delight. Records by Nightmares On Wax, Sweet Exorcist, Juno, XON and a legion of others will be with me as long as I live, and should so many years of sonic abuse one day render my hearing kaput, it's slightly reassuring to know that I'll always be able to FEEL the power of them as they shift masses of air through speakers with their sub bass and low frequency oscillations.

Over the ensuing years I've followed all strains of UK dance music with varying degrees of interest. The last couple of years have been deeply satisfying as records that come from the same mould as that golden 1989 - 91 era (but with a sound inherently modern rather than trying to recreate the past - something so much modern dance music is guilty of) have become more prominent. Artist such as Ramadanman in his various guises, Julio Bashmore and a host of others have brought back the bass, syncopated rhythms and sometimes the bleeps at a manageably groovesome tempo that is sexier, sonically more interesting and more powerful, to my ears, than a zillion unimaginative and derivative deep house or minimal clones. They are pushing boundaries which for me is what electronic music was always meant to do and was one of thee main, but often long undelivered promises of techno.  This mix is 40 tracks of UK Bass music past, present and future (there are actually two non British tracks included. A prize to anyone who spots them) and is a distinctively British sound that in its original form didn't really translate outside the UK, though its mutant offspring have gone on to reverberate around the globe. Old and new sit side by side all (imo) sharing some dna, intentional or otherwise with those Unique 3 records that first lit up my ears 22 years ago. Here's to the next 22 years of UK dance hybrids!


Once again we aren't making a tracklisting available for the podcast but if you want to know what anything is, feel free to get in touch and we will let you know. Nearly all the music contained here is from vinyl records so any audio imperfections are a result of the age and wear of the records; many of the older 12"s on here received a LOT of club abuse. The mix is LONG, contains 40 tracks, lasts 130 minutes and the download is a 192kbps mp3 (188mb). Enjoy, and please, don't listen to it on crummy laptop speakers as yr going to miss the whole point.


Optimo Podcast 9 Bass and Bleepcast 1989 - 2011

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)

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)

JD Twitch is a true musical magpie. Over his long and storied career the Scot has been responsible for seminal Glasgow party Optimo alongside Jonnie Wilkes, has put out post punk compilations, done trance mixes, run various different labels (from Autonomous Africa to Optimo Music) and is a famously skilled and eclectic DJ who has headlined all over the world. He has done a fabric CD and a compilation for R&S, produces with Dave Clark as Optimo (Espacio) as well as solo under a wide range of aliases. As such he is a veritable mine of musical knowledge and a real pillar of the underground scene. For his Dekmantel podcast he has delivered us something, as you would expect, rather special.

“It's a mix of all Dutch dance tracks from the very early 90s,” he says. “It features a handful of well known classics but lots of forgotten gems and these were all records I played incessantly in very sweaty raves at that time, so a few of the records are a little scratchy, dusty, worn down. I wanted to do this mix as I was mad about Dutch records back then and I think Holland produced so much amazing music during this period and had a very distinctive, unique sound and perhaps a lot of people today don't know it was one of the pioneering nations of house and techno. The club I did back then, Pure, brought over a lot of dutch artists to play in the early 90s - Dimitri (many, many times), Eddie de de Clercq, Marcello, Random XS, Terrace, Miss Djax, Unit Moebius, Orlando Voorn, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia and Acid Junkies to name a few.  Lastly, I think the records from back then still sound great today!” Tune in and you will surely agree. 

Dekmantel Podcast 038 - JD Twitch (Optimo)

JD Twitch Post-Punk special on NTS Radio 30/10/2015. Downloadable as a 320 mp3.

Tracklisting -

This Heat - Pool
The Desperate Bicycles - The Medium Was Tedium
Blurt -  Some Come
The Distributors - Wireless
The Murphy Federation - Slipping Past On The Inside
Basement 5 - Paranoia
Mark Wyman - Space In Faders
Missing Scientists - Big City Bright Lights
Maximum Joy - Mouse An' Me 
23 Skidoo - Vegas El Bandito
The Impossible Dreamers - Spin
Glaxo Babies - Shake The Foundations
The Tesco Bombers - Hernando's Hideaway
Chantage - It's Only Money
Snatch - Shopping For Clothes
The Slits - Earthbeat
Sara Goes Pop - Arab O Habab Of Arabia
Amos & Sara - The Snake
L. Voag - Kitchen
Brenda Ray - Starlight
Pink Military - Did You See Her?
Poison Girls - Old Tarts Song
Zounds - Can't Cheat Karma
The Scars - Horrorshow
Clock DVA - 4 Hours
Rema Rema - Entry
Swell Maps - Let's Build A Car
Tools You Can Trust - Show Your Teeth
Robert Rental - A.C.C.
Philip & His Foetus Vibrations - Spite Your Face
Alex Fergusson - Brushing Your Hair
Comrade Oleau - Tiny Revolutions
The Lenin Lads - Dunlop
The Homosexuals - Prestel
Desmond Simmons - Pathenon

JD Twitch Post Punk special NTS Radio 30/10/2015

Astral.  Jazz.

If you are a deep listener of cosmic / astral / spiritual / free / exotic etc. jazz then skip this as there probably won't be any surprises here. I don't for a minute profess to be any sort of expert with regard to this music and know I am only scratching the surface, but what I have listened to is some of thee most transcendental music I have ever heard. Listened to at the right time and the right place, there is no other music i know that will transport me to such a blissful inner space.

I guess my introduction to this music came courtesy of Soul Jazz Records and their wonderful 1995 "Universal Sounds Of America" compilation (http://www.discogs.com/Various-Universal-Sounds-Of-America/release/405103). i'd been desperate to hear Sun Ra for a long time but back then his music was very hard to get hold of. Sun Ra was a revelation, everything I'd hoped for and much more, and so was everything else on the album. At this time, FOPP records in Glasgow was one of the best record shops in the country. The owner was a jazz fanatic and sold an incredible selection of long out of print vinyl and cd jazz albums at very low prices, many of which he had licensed and had repressed specifically to stock in his chain. The prices were low enough that it was possible to risk buying albums one knew nothing about on the off chance they might be great, and most of them were. I discovered wonderful albums by Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Sonny Sharrock, Alice Coltrane, Pharaoah Sanders and many more that opened my mind in a different way from any music I had previously encountered. As a result of FOPP's super cheap vinyl policy, these records filtered around Glasgow and records that would be cult favourites in other parts of the world would be heard all over the place here. I remember one Sunday morning going to my local newsagent's to get some milk and hearing Alice Coltrane's "Journey In Satchidanada" rippling through the shop. Allegedly FOPP were selling as many copies of "Bitches Brew" as they were of Radiohead's "The Bends". I sometimes wonder if this had any impact on the music that was being made in Glasgow around this time? Myself and Jonnie did our first and only studio session together back then with a local act who were trying to channel Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Keiji Heino and Kim Fowley! Needless to say the results were an unlistenable mess but the spirit of adventure was definitely in the Glasgow air.

As with most music I like, this is all over the place, both in form and with regard to when it was recorded. Some of it will instantly calm your deepest woes while some of it may challenge your ears to the maximum, but, all of it is music that seems to have been beamed to its makers from a dimension the vast majority of us are not in touch with. "Deep" is a much misused and abused word with regard to music but these sonic missives are the embodiment of that word. Immerse yourself.

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 podcast is not mixed, merely segued, contains 13 tracks, lasts 78 minutes and the download is a 192kbps mp3 (107mb).

The other Optimo podcasts are available via iTunes or from here - feed://www.optimo.co.uk/podcasts/index.xml

Optimo Podcast 10 - Astral Travelling

Solid Steel in association with Serato (4th March) With the final BLOC weekend approaching we invited JD Twitch from Optimo, who are playing on the Friday night to do a Solid Steel mix. Along with JG Wilkes they ran the legendary Optimo Espacio weekly night at the Sub Club in Glasgow. JD Twitch recently released his So-Low compilation exploring some of the early 80's synth, industrial and cold wave tracks that he was playing when he first started DJing in 1987. He told us;
"I find it impossible to do club mixes unless I am in a club so I suppose this is a hybrid mix that is a cross between a radio type show and a club set. I'd definitely play everything on here in a club but it probably wouldn't sound quite like this and would have a different energy. So, I suppose the aim is for it to be something that is good to listen to that also might hopefully make people feel like they may want to go out dancing sometime soon. The mix was recorded at home on two turntables and a laptop running Ableton live. The mix was done live but there was a cataclysmically bad mix about half way through and rather than start again I edited that bit afterwards. The music is from 1976 - 2016 and includes a few as yet unreleased tracks."

The Solid Steel website http://solidsteel.net/ for track lists and archive shows.
You can follow Solid Steel on  facebook.com/pages/Solid-Steel/175027509192663
instagram.com/solidsteelradio
twitter.com/SolidSteelRadio
Email solidsteel@ninjatune.net

Go to Hour 2 here  https://soundcloud.com/ninja-tune/solid-steel-radio-show-432016-hour-2-kasra-v

Hour 1 - JD Twitch (Optimo)

David Bowie - Speed Of Life - RCA
Trikk - General System - Optimo Trax
Christiane F - Wunderbar - Posh Boy
Exkurs - Fakten - Konkurrenz
Maria Rita -  Cantico Brasileiro nº 3 (Kamaiura) (JD Twitch edit)
Luke Solomon & Nick Maurer - Fire Beat
Trikk - Several (Gysin Dub) - Optimo Trax
Chiwoniso - Zvichapera - Nyami Nyami records 
Telez Martiny - I Need Your Love 
Iration Steppas - Scud Missile - Iration Steppas
The Wizard And The Prince - The Wiz Is A Genius - City Limits 
God Within - Raincry - Hardkiss
MR TC featuring Merlin Nova - Teeth - Optimo Music
Byetone - Opal - Raster-Noton
Phortune - Can You Feel The Bass? - Hot Mix 5 Records
Underspreche - Jefe - Optimo Trax
La Dusseldorf - Rheinita (JD Twitch edit) - Strand ‎

Solid Steel Radio Show 4/3/2016 Hour 1 - JD Twitch (Optimo)

Late 2016 will see the launch of the So Low label which will complement the occasional nights of the same name in Glasgow. The label will focus on releasing music that veers towards the "Synth" side of the So Low sound. That may seem a rather vague term so this mix aims to show the sort of thing that might be, and includes a couple of the first releases. The label will be run by JD Twitch in cooperation with Iona Fortune, Becky Marshall and Katie Shambles. There will be reissues of lost Synth gems alongside brand new Synth music. The first 5 releases are currently in the process of being put together. All releases will be vinyl / digital and distribution will be through Kompakt. 

This is a CD length mix recorded live on two turntables plus a laptop with minimal post recording editing. Available as a 320 mp3 download.

As an aside, I am often asked why there are no mixes on my Soundcloud that are typical of the club sets I most frequently play. There's no real reason but I tend not to ever record those types of sets and feel live recordings make more sense in the moment rather than after the fact. I will however endeavour to upload some sets in that vein at some point.

JD Twitch - So Low So Synth (Live At The Solar Lodge, Glasgow 23 05 2016)

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)

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

Our show on NTS, broadcast 6-8pm, Tuesday February 14th 2017. First hour is Twitch, second hour is Wilkes. Available to download as a 320 mp3. Tracklisting -

Twitch - 

Michael Karoli & Polly Eltes - One Thing (Or The Other)
Jackson Jones - Put Your Pants On
Derrick Harriott - Message From A Blackman
The Temptations - Message From A Blackman
Gombeen & Doyen - 7000 Years
The Golden Filter - Dust
Can - And More (Westbam remix)
Nasty Woman
Solar - 5 Seconds
Jean Hoyoux - La Marssivité
Miyako Koda - A Sea Of Love
Miyako Koda - Io
Coil - The Sea Priestess
Hiroyuki Namba - Tropical Exposition

--------------

Wilkes -

Tom Dissevelt - Sincopa - Vibracion  
Falcons - Perdidi En El Universo (Instrumental)
The Turtles - I'm Chief Kamanawanalea (Chief Rocca Edit)
Tiger -  Rap Pon Rydim
Flying Lizards  - Sex machine 
Delta 5 - Mind Your Own Business 
Minimal Compact - Immer Vorbei 
Jefferson Belt - Gold Dust 
The Magrheban - Afric
Edit (Anon)
Moscoman  - Pirate of the Lost park
Superpitcher  - Snow Blind

Optimo (Espacio) - NTS - 14/02/2017

Our show on NTS, broadcast 6-8pm, Tuesday April 11th 2017. First hour is Twitch, second hour is Wilkes. Available to download as a 320 mp3. Tracklisting -


Twitch


Ted Milton - Love Is Like A Violence (Optimo Music)
Cologne Tape - Welt 2 (Magazine)
Miharu Koshi - Parallelisme (Yen Records)
Moot - Mavis (Variety Recording Service) 
Sordid Sound System - Brave New World (Invisible Inc.)
Takashi Toyoda - Sky (Sound Of Tranquility)
Maria Rita - Lamento Africano / Rictus (Selva Discos / Optimo Music)
Tommy McCook & The Agrovators - The Dub Station (Attack)
Dennis Bovell & Root United feat. Darcus Howe - Dubylon (White)
Lidj Incorporated - Line Up (Youth Sound Records)
Lo Kindre - Distant Dreams (Optimo Music)
Happy Meals - May You Be The Mother - May You Be The Sun (So Low / Optimo Music)
Spring Break - Piano Scarf (Jolly Jams)
Sandii - Zoot Kook (Alfa)


————

Wilkes 

Belbury Poly & Moon Wiring Club - The Music Room (Ghost Box)
Kim Rapatti - Musta Peili (Dum Records)
DJ Sotofett Ol pa SM-Art Bar (Borft)
Prins Thomas - Sun Araw Saddle Soap remix (Smalltown Supersound)
TV Victor - La Beff (Tresor)
Move D - Roll Split (Away)
Succhiamo Succhimo (Anti Note)
Inkke - Pioneer Weightless Vol 2 (Different Circles)
Delia Gonzalez - Roulette (DFA)
Fantastic Twins - Time Science (Hippie Dance)
Chinaski - Ghost Rider (Live At Robert Johnson)
Solar - 5 seconds (Sqirrels on Film)
AHU  - “Untitled 3" (feat Lenta) (Shahr Farang Germany)

Optimo (Espacio) - NTS - 11/04/2017

Optimo's JD Twitch played "spiritual synth dub, DIY exotica and post-punk chanson" live from Brilliant Corners.

RA Live - 14.05.17 JD Twitch (Optimo) at Brilliant Corners

I still often get asked why I don’t put up more mixes that reflect my more usual dj style. I’m not sure really but maybe it is because I get to hear myself play like that all the time and it’s more interesting to me to put up other stuff? I also like that people who have just come across me and check out my Soundcloud for the first time might think they have stumbled on a reggae dj with the same name by mistake. To help stoke that confusion, here’s a third Bucky Skank mix. Bucky Skank is an annual night I do in Glasgow where I play all Jamaican music and Jamaican inspired music. This year was the 6th edition. I think I get slightly better at doing it each year and reckon by 2031 I might have nailed it. 

This Bucky Skank mix is made up of two sections recorded live on the night of this year’s party combined with a section recorded at home. Hopefully my cunning editing will make it hard to tell where the joins are. It is available to download as a 320 mp3. The music here ranges from 1971 right up to 2017.

I think this mix contains completely different tracks from the other Bucky Skank mixes, or at the very least with minimal crossover and is perhaps my favourite so far. It is LONG! 2 hours 30 minutes and perhaps delves a bit deeper in parts than the previous mixes, though I hope it is still fun to listen to. A lot of fun was had on the night and ultimately that is what the Bucky Skank nights are all about. Roll on next year’s.

JD Twitch - Bucky Skank Jamaican Soundsystem mix 2017

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)

** Part 1 now available from here - http://soundcloud.com/alexchase/ohm-dedication-series-2-jd **

For my ears, Adrian Sherwood is the most sonically innovative producer the UK has ever given birth to. If you don't know anything about Mr. Sherwood or his ON U Sound label, either do a bit of Googling, have a listen to this mix or read this interview I was fortunate enough to conduct a couple of months ago (when he was in Glasgow) that is on the Racket Racket website - http://racketracket.co.uk/music/jd-twitch-meets-adrian-sherwood/

This mix covers music from the years 1979 - 88 and focuses on Adrian Sherwood's dubwise productions, most of which were released on his ON U Sound label (a great overview of the label can be found here - http://www.skysaw.org/onu/)

The mix is DUB in the widest (and wildest) sense of that word and veers from beautiful, heart-melting songs to cavernously deep, hard bass pulsations to the odd bit of brain melting sonic radicalism. To this day I don't think any other producer has pushed the envelope so hard which is partly down to a general lack of balls on the part of other producers and partly due to the fact that these productions were all recorded to tape and mixed on a desk with 100% outboard gear, so that pushing the tape way beyond its intended limits forms a large part of the character of the sound. His totally deranged dub techniques are perhaps a little more prevalent on part 1 (see below) of this podcast while this part is in the main more of a continuous heart throb with odd moments of sonic destruction, offering a masterclass in dub mixing techniques many of which Adrian Sherwood pioneered.

In my late teens and early 20s, Adrian Sherwood's work impacted on me more than anything I had previously heard and made me think about sonic possibilities in a completely new way. I would buy any record he had been involved with unheard and got into a lot of other artists purely because he had been involved with making their records. Indeed, my nom de plume "Twitch" came from a record he produced and our Optimo slogan "We Love Your Ears" came from the sleeve of a record he remixed. I hadn't listened to a lot of these records for many, many years and fell in love with them all over again while putting this together. It was a complete labour of love to do and a revelation to hear how fresh and wild this music still sounds.

The tracks are mostly mixed together but this podcast really isn't about my mixing at all - it's all about the 25 sonic missives included on it (several of the tracks are different versions of the same rhythm edited together). All the tracks were taken from vinyl so any unintended sonic imperfections are a result of the source records having been played countless times in the past.

This is part 2 of this podcast. Part 1 which focuses on his more electronic wild side (Tackhead, Fats Comet, Keith LeBlanc etc.) is now available here - http://soundcloud.com/alexchase/ohm-dedication-series-2-jd
Should you so desire, the 2 podcasts can be synced together to provide one continuous mix of around 3 and a half hours.

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 I will let you know. The mix is a 320kbps mp3 (230mb) and is 101 minutes long.

Optimo Podcast 12 - Adrian Sherwood On U Sound mix part 2 (dub)

Optimogeddon Pt 3 of 5

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

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