OPTIMO DISCOGRAPHY (TWITCH)



This page will eventually become a full discography of all the musical projects Twitch and Wilkes have been involved in over the years but initially just contains a discography of all remixes by Twitch. Optimo's Twitch and Wilkes work separately when making music so each will have their own page (When Jonnie gives me his info I'll make his page). There are a couple of things to be added to this so check back later to see the full discography.


Twitch Remixes / Re edits / Releases (most recent first)






Boris - Buzz-In (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Scion 2009)







KXP - 180 Hours (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Smalltown Supersound 2009)





Invasion - Spell (An Optimo (Espacio) 12" edit) (Thisismusic 2009)







Manic Street Preachers - Journal For Plague Lovers (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Heavenly 2009)







Florence And The Machine - Dog Days Are Over (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Moshi Moshi 2008)







The Presets - Talk Like That (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Modular Records 2008)







Dave P and Adam Sparkles - Sunday Night In Glasgow (Twitch's "I Watched My Bassbins In 91" Mix) (Satellite Of Love 2008)







Capricorn - 20hz (Optimo edit) (R&S 2008)







Liquid Liquid - Optimo (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Domino Records 2008)








The Shortwave Set - No Social (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) / (An Optimo (Espacio) dub mix) (Wall Of Sound 10" 2008)








Captain - Animal (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (EMI 2007 - unreleased)







Colder - To The Music (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Output 2007)







Prinzhorn Dance School - Space Invader (An Optimo (Espacio) Version) (DFA 2007)







Panico - Guadalupe (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Tigersushi 2007)






Pharoahe Monch - Body Baby (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Universal 2007)






Allez Allez - She's Stirring Up (An Optimo (Espacio) Drum Attack) (Eskimo Recordings 2007 - due out 2008)






Pepe Deluxe - Go For Blue (An Optimo (Espacio) 3rd Summer of Love Version) (Catskills Records 2007)






Cobra Dukes - Airtight (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Glasgow Underground 2007)






Lottergirls - The Day The World Turned Dayglo (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Four Music 2007)







Little Barrie - Cash In (An Optimo (Espacio) Beat Version) / (An Optimo (Espacio) Beatless Version) (Genuine Records 2007 - unreleased)







The Glimmers - Wanna Make Out (An Optimo (Espacio) Dub) (Diskimo 2006)







They Came From The Stars, I Saw Them - It's Time (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) (Thisisnotanexit Records 2006)







Love Is All - Busy Doing Nothing (An Optimo (Espacio) Refreak) / Busy Doing Nothing (An Optimo (Espacio) Remix) (Parlophone 2006 - released 2007)







Peter, Bjorn and John - Let's Call It Off (JD Twitch's Optimo mix) (Wichita Recordings 2006 - unreleased)







Wolfmother - Woman (JD Twitch's Optimo edit) (Modular Records 2006)





Tussle - Elephant (JD Twitch's Optimo Fuckhead mix) (Smalltown Supersound 2006 - released 2007)





The Gossip - Listen Up! (JD Twitch's Optimo mix) (Backyard Records 2006)





Crazy Girl - The Rebel (JD Twitch's Gris Gris Optimo mix) (Tummy Touch Records 2006)





Franz Ferdinand - Outsiders (JD Twitch and The Truffle Club's Optimo Refreak) (Domino Records 2006)





Trio Exklusiv - Doors Open (JD Twitch Optimo mix) / (JD Twitch Slotimo mix) (Klein Records 2005)




Rainer from Klein Records had us over to play his night in Vienna early in the year and it was one of our favourite gigs of 2005. Some months later he sent over Trio Exklusiv's cd and asked if there was anything I'd like to remix from it and this song leapt out. Trio Exclusiv are very loosely a jazz trio but their album was produced by the mighty Patrick Pulsinger so has quite a lot of electronics going on too. The original of this is maybe the most dancefloor friendly track on the record and Rainer asked if I would do a main mix and then something a little more freaked out. I did the more 'freaked out' mix first which coincided with me upgrading to Ableton Live 5. I kept some of the horns and the vocodered vocals and then built everything else using the midi side of Live 5. It is quite slow at around 113bpm and a little dark and spaced out. It was meant to be very minimal but much as I love minimal music I guess I can't help being maximal.

For the main mix I also kept the horn section and vocals from the original and used some of the same sequences I'd used in the other mix but changed the drums, added some more parts and increased the tempo. I also used a single note of Kid Congo's guitar sampled from the intro to a Gun Club song and used a midi chord feature in Live and a filter to create a sort of guitar synth freakout in the middle. This was done live in one take on top as I felt it needed something else to make it a bit more freaked out. There is also a tiny bit of vocal from the late and great Jeffrey Lee Pierce in there too. I hope he would be ok with that.






Dsico - Walking (JD Twitch Optimo mix) (Spasticated 2005)

Dsico is an Australian dude best known for being the king of the mash up under the alias Dsico that No-Talent Hack. Realising before most others that mash ups had been pretty much done to death, he proved that he did indeed have talent by recording and releasing an album of his own songs. I got to know Dsico via a file sharing site where we would have endless disagreements about music. I had been working on a (now aborted) remix for the Edinburgh band X Vectors but couldn't get the mix right so Dsico offered to tweak my final mix. In exchange I agreed to do a remix of one of his songs (I'm still not quite sure how this deal was negotiated - perhaps I was a wee bit tipsy?).

For this mix, I kept his vocals and bassline and reprogrammed everything else and tried to create an electro pop song. I'm not sure if I succeeded as it has a bit of a noisy klank in there which certainly isn't pop. Just as I started doing it, a synth I had won on Ebay arrived from Australia so it seemed fitting to use that. Thus, pretty much all the synth sounds come from an early 70's synth - a Korg 700S which was the synth Daniel Miller used to create all the sounds on The Normal's 'Warm Leatherette' - although I heavily processed them. The mix is available on a cd remix compilation of tracks from Dsico's album.

You can hear an unreleased dub mix of it here.




Sons And Daughters - Dance Me In (JD Twitch and The Truffle Club's Optimo Mix) (snappy title, huh?) (Domino Records 2005)




I adore Sons and Daughters and had been playing the original of this for sometime when myself and Jonnie got asked if we would like to remix something by them. Jonnie went for 'La Lune' and I chose this. The original worked pretty much perfectly on the dancefloor as it was but I wanted to beef it up and extend it slightly for club play, and make it so it could be mixed by djs. Basically I wanted to do an old school kind of remix where you keep the song completely intact but just enhance what is there to make it work better in a club. I always work on my own when doing remixes but for this I called in an old friend Dave Clark.

I released Dave's old band's first single over ten years ago, have released his more recent electronic music on OSCARR (The Truffle Club) and am aiming to release his new band's (Big Ned) amazing album later this year. Dave is a studio wizz and also a drummer so I gave him all the drum tracks and got him to reproduce them so that they were the same as the original drums but with a techno sheen. He did a wonderful job! I then built a new intro and added an extended drum, bass and vocal breakdown in the middle and bob was your uncle. Except he wasn't. The finished remix is very simple but I actually spent an age on this as working with the music of a live band who don't play to a click track is not very conducive to working with sequencers. Getting everything in time with everything else was a nightmare but I got there in the end. I hoped by doing this I hadn't spoiled the feel of the original song but thankfully the band didn't think I had. I then handed the whole thing back to Dave to do a clearer final mix than the one I had done. It was a really good way to work and definitely something I would do again if working on a remix for a band. Thanks Dave!

Domino are going to release this as a limited edition 12" later in the year / early in 2006.






Rinocerose - Bitch (JD Twitch's Optimo mix) (V2 2005)




I wasn't too familair with this French band's work but they sent me an mp3 of the song and I really liked it. I don't think I could remix something I didn't like. It just wouldn't feel right. Both myself and Jonnie get asked to do loads of mixes but quite often we don't have time and even more often we will turn them down because we don't like them. This track is a full song and I kept all of the vocals in the remix. I think I prefer working with songs as my favourite part of doing a remix is the arrangement and songs lend themselves to a creative arrangement a lot better than instrumental tracks. At least to me they do. I actually used quite a lot of the original on this - two of their guitar parts and some synth too - but added a more electronic backing to it. It's a bit more conventional than most of the other remixes I've done (ie it doesn't do anything really crazy or stoopid) as I liked the groove of the original and wanted to keep it in that vein.






Kaos - Now and Forever (JD Twitch's Optimo mix) (K7 2005)





Kaos is a Berlin legend who has been making music and dj'ing for many, many years He put out his first solo album early in 2005 on Berlin's K7 and this is the second single from it. He emailed me direct to ask if I would remix it and after hearing the original, I immediately said yes. The original features the vocals of my good friends Khan and Snax aka Captain Comatose so I knew I was going to enjoy doing this, and I did! I programmed really stripped down and heavy drums and took a sample from an Israeli numbers station for a bit of audio subversion and added lots of synth patterns and effects. It's really in two parts as half way through it stops completely for a few seconds and then in comes a funk riff that then morphs into a rave-funk track. The whole thing has a really harsh sound to it and having been road tested at Optimo, I knew it would work on a big sound system. Whether anyone will play it is another matter. Incidentally, the promotional copies just call it an 'Optimo' mix but the released version will have the correct credits.

*stop press* - As it turns out, Khan took it upon himself to give this mix a name of his own devising for the finished copy. As he thinks it is so banging, he has christened it the 'Twitch Optimo Headbanger Mix'. Whatcha gonna do?





Jonathan Vance - Sylvia The Eagle (JD Twitch's Optimo mix) (Run Roc 2005)



In mid 2004 I got a package through the post from Run Roc records in New York containing a bunch of 12's and some cdrs of forthcoming releases. I particularly liked the original of this that was on one of the cds and so they asked me if I would like to have a go at remixing it. The original is a pretty sloppy sounding (in a good way) hypnotic rock track and I wanted to keep that feel. I kept all the original vocals and drums and programmed my own drums on top, added some loops from some old no wave records, some saxaphone and some synth arpeggios from my old Korg synth. I deliberately didn't want it to 'kick' so there's no big kick drum and overall I think I managed to get the kind of shambolic / falling apart at the seams kind of groove I was aiming for. Run Roc put out a few hundred promo copies but the finished package comes in a fabulous hand silk screened sleeve.







Dennis Young / Liquid Liquid - Flextone (JD Twitch's Optimo edit) (Rush Hour 2005)





Dennis Young is the marimba and percussion player with Liquid Liquid but he has also been making his own music for years and years which you can check out here. After Liquid Liquid played Optimo in 2003 I stayed in touch with Dennis via email and he sent me a cdr of his forthcoming solo album. I particularly liked the song he had done with Liquid Liquid vocalist Sal Principato called 'Signal Up Ahead' and when Rush Hour in Holland decided to release it as a single, Dennis asked me to remix it. I spent ages and ages working on it but couldn't come up with anything I was happy with so had to let him down. He then informed me that 'Flextone' which is far and away the best song from LL's final 1984 'Dig We Must' ep was going to be on the record too and suggested I re edit it. The original is very short so I more or less doubled the length, beefed up the bottom end and added some effects. This one was a total pleasure and an honour to do.





Denise Motto - IMINXTC (JD Twitch's Black Rabbit Whorehouse Optimo mix) (Skylax Records 2005)



Proper scan to follow

The original of this was one of the first house records from Chicago I ever bought and probably the one that made me fall in love with house music. It came out in 1986 or 87 and was the sleaziest thing I had ever heard. Skylax records in Paris mentioned to me that they had the rights to it and I jumped at the chance to do a remix. I got a bit carried away and did three completely different ones in July of 2004. This is actually probably my least favourite of the three but it's the one they decided to use. However, it's the original mix that is the thing of wonder on this record. Just a drum machine, a bassline (later copied by Adonis for 'No Way Back)' and Denise's sultry, jacking vocals. Still sends shivers down my spine.

You can hear one of the unreleased mixes here.



Steve Poindexter - Computer Madness (JD Twitch's Industrial Madness Optimo mix) (Parisonic Records 2004)



The original of this was a total anthem at the club Pure that I did in Edinburgh from 1990 - 2000. From '89, basically it's just a drum machine and a bleep but it just oozes with Chicago house groove. I decided it was so classic that it was pretty much untouchable so I decided to do something really extreme. At the time (November 2003), I had been listening to a lot of my old 'metal bashing' / industrial records and so sampled tiny bits of Test Dept, Einsturzende Neubauten, Esplendor Geometrico and SPK and made up some industrial drum kits. I also banged some dustbin lids together and sampled them too. The end result is pretty nutsoid and I can't imagine many djs have played it out. I really like this one despite the fact that I got ripped off (I never got paid for doing it) and had to buy my own copy.

You can hear this remix here.



Ralphie Rosario - In The Night (The Optimo remix) (Parisonic Records 2003)




I never got paid for this one either and again I had to buy my own copy. But hey, what the heck, it was good practice and a thrill to remix a favourite song. The original is yet another really early Chicago house song (1988) that almost verges on synth pop. I invent genres to put on mp3s in iTunes almost every and that day (April 2003) had come up with 'drone house'. So I took some drones from something else I had been working on, took chunks of the original, programmed some really plastic sounding drums and added a break in the middle with guitar samples taken from an old Delta 5 track that probably put most djs off playing it out. I even managed to fit an Acid Mothers Temple vocal sample in there too. I used to play this at The Black Rabbit Whorehouse and was quite taken aback at how well it went down. Basically I did this, the Steve Poindexter and the Denise Motto because they had all been records that were a big part of my techno / house days and it was an honour to be asked to have a go at doing something with them. But, in every case, I would have to say that the originals are all pretty much untouchable.

One last thing - this was meant to be called the 'JD Twitch Optimo mix' but the label messed up. Myself and Wilkes never do remixes just under the 'Optimo' name but rather add 'Optimo' after our names.

You can hear this remix here.



Twitch - Contort Yourself (Ze Records 2003)




Despite common misconceptions, this is not actually a remix but rather a cover version and is the only record I have ever released under the 'Twitch' name. The original of this is one of my all time favourite records - 'Contort Yourself' by James White and The Blacks from 1978 which you can read about on the Optimo classics page. Around about 2002 I decided to start a Ze Records website as I really loved the label and there was almost nothing about it on the internet. I only got as far as doing the first page when Michel Esteban (the 'e' in ZE) stumbled across it and got in touch with me. He had decided at that time to relaunch the label and reissue many of the classic releases. We started a long email correspondence and when he discovered I dabbled in making music, asked me if I would like to participate in one of his upcoming projects. The idea was that various people would cover their favourite Ze release and these would then be compiled on an album. I jumped at the chance and set to work right away. Almost all of it is programmed with only very slight sampling of the original although in the middle I took a vocal sample from The Contortions original non disco version. I got my partner in my old band Mount Florida to record lots of bass and guitar parts and I then cut these up to use in the backing track. I also got my girlfriend and two of her friends to sing the 'Contort Yourself' line. I didn't know if Michel was even going to use it but as soon as he heard it he decided he wanted to release it as a 12" which would be the first new release on Ze in almost 20 years. To say I was thrilled would be an understatement.

With this in mind I had to record a B-side. I asked Jonnie if he wanted to contribute and so him and his musical partner James Savage came up with 'Stained Sheets'. It's not a cover but rather a tribute to the James White and The Blacks extremely sleazy song of the same name. Jonnie even sings on it! For the second track, I went back to a load of recordings I had been given of Davey Henderson (formerly from the Fire Engines) jamming with Gareth Sager (formerly from The Pop Group) and processed and reworked them with additional production into 'No Wave, Drone Wave' which was my attempt at trying to create something that sounded like it might have been a band from the No Wave era messed about with on a computer. It also contains a sneaky heavily processed sample from The Fire Engines 'Get Up and Use Me' and ones from Lydia Lunch's Teenage Jesus and The Jerks, DNA, Bush Tetras, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, James White and The Blacks and a drum loop from XTC's 'Making Plans For Nigel'.

It did reasonably well when it came out although it did suffer from poor distribution. It also got licensed to a German compilation called 'Modern Wild Dub'. I never received any payment for making this but frankly, the thrill of having my own record in one of those legendary Ze New York taxi sleeves was payment enough.

One of Ze's other planned releases was a compilation called Ze Edits for which I re edited several Ze tracks but that along with the proposed covers compilation seems destined never to appear.