Optimo (Espacio) Podcasts

Optimo Podcast 11 - Twitch 1991 (recorded in 1991)

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 14:44:45 GMT

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). There is no tracklisting as I am unable to identify a few of the tracks. Thanks to Richard aka Restless Native whose Soundcloud is here - soundcloud.com/restlessnative

Optimo Podcast 10 - Astral Jazz

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:04:36 GMT

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 (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 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).

Optimo Podcast 9 - Bass and Bleepcast 1989 - 2011

Mon, 09 May 2011 00:44:31 GMT

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 various 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 8 - My Friend Jack

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:05:20 GMT

One Saturday afternoon in 1986, following a night out at The Delta I went into "Makin' Tracks", a record shop near Cornmarket in Belfast, summoned the courage to interrupt the sales assistant and asked if he had a record which at the time I could only describe as having a lot of clapping sounds and went "jack the groove, jack the groove, jack, jack, jack jack the groove". He walked me over to a tub of records on the floor, pointed and told me I might find it in there. It was there and not surprisingly it was called "Jack the Groove" (by a group called "Raze"). 25 years later I'm still buying records with that crazy swing and those claps, made on cheap electronic instruments which look more like toys and I'm still getting that urge to thoroughly jack my body when I hear them. This was the beginning of house and for all of us who got the bug for this simple infectious music form, it was the beginning of a long obsession. An obsession with tracks often very similar, cheaply produced, poorly manufactured (See Twitch, Guardian 3:03:11 on Trax Records) with more often than not, repetitive (and sometimes a little ridiculous) but rather wonderful, heartfelt vocals. It was direct in it's message and it's sound, it cut across race and class and it reached us on the dancefloor like nothing else had. The podcast compiles and mixes a collection of music which I consider to be thoroughly jackin'. They are not the most obscure house records in my collection, in fact none of them are particularly difficult to find at all but without exception they touched me in the same way - I want to jack. The podcast is not intended to be nostalgic, I've included music from 1986 - 2011 (as well as the final track from 1977 - Cat Stevens' "Was Dog A Doughnut?" which somehow seems relevant even though it was produced 5 years before the 808 drum machine came to be). There's also track which is only available digitally, a first for me! (I felt I had to include our friend HMC's "Late Night Tuff Guy - I Get Deeper" after seeing the crowd's reaction again and again as Twitch dropped this at our parties - the response was universal every time, in every country - the room was jackin' !!! absolutely no doubt about that) - The podcast lasts just over an hour, comprises of 18 tracks and it's 91.4MB. Time to Jack!

Optimo Podcast 7 - Creatures Of The Night

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:30:41 GMT

This is an "accidental" podcast. I was meant to play in London on Friday July 30th with the wonderful Factory Floor. Sadly, due to licensing problems at the venue it was cancelled. I had spent quite a lot of time that week looking out records that I thought would compliment Factory Floor and as it seemed a shame to waste all that effort I put this together during the time I would have been playing the gig. This podcast is called "Creatures of the Night" and can perhaps be seen as the last in a trilogy of mixes following the "Cold War" and "Electrobeat" ones that are still available from our website - www.optimo.co.uk/goodies/#coldwar AND www.optimo.co.uk/goodies/#electrobeat The music here ranges from the years 1976 to 2011, with the majority of the music being from the early to mid 1980s. It is a re-imagining of the music I played when I very first started djing (in 1987) that back then I called electrobeat or, to use the dreaded 'G" word, electrogoth. That is perhaps disingenuous to a lot of the music included here, but there is undoubtedly a certain crepuscular aura to a lot of the music on the mix that might also be called EBM, New Beat, Darkwave, Minimal Synth, or whatever the catch all phrase du jour is. It is music that before the dominance of house music, those creatures of the night seeking a Eurocentric electronic soundtrack used to cast shadows to on the dancefloor through the fog of the smoke machine and strobe light. 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. All the music contained here is from vinyl records so any audio imperfections are a result of the age and wear of the records. The mix was recorded in real time with minimal editing afterwards so please excuse any technical flaws. The mix contains 23 tracks and lasts 84 minutes and the download is a 192kbps mp3 (114mb). Enjoy.

Optimo Podcast 6 - Acid Eyeful

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:56:28 GMT

Fast on the heels of podcast No. 5, the Optimo Godcast, comes another podcast celebrating the little silver box that is the Roland TB 303, the machine that along with some innovators from Chicago gave the world Acid House. This podcast is called "Acid Eyeful". Some of you may have part of this as we gave the last two thirds of it away on the Optimo website in May. This is the full 72 minute version and the mix was recorded using two turntables and a laptop in one take with some minor editing after the fact (like some of the music contained within, the mix may be a little rough in places). It contains acid tracks of many varieties from 1987 - 2010 from the following cities - Chicago, Detroit, Edinburgh, Toronto, Frankfurt, Ghent, Paris, New York, Liverpool and London. 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. The mix contains 20 tracks and lasts 70 minutes and the download is a 192kbps mp3 (99.5mb). Enjoy.

Optimo Godcast - If You're Going To Get Down, Get Down And Pray

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:51:13 GMT

It has been a while since the last podcast so apologies for that. Hopefully they should appear a bit more regularly from now on (famous last words!) This podcast is called "If You're Going to Get Down, Get Down and Pray - The Optimo Godcast". We are not trying to evangelise anything apart from the music here. I have accidentally amassed quite a lot of gospel records from around the world over the years and originally the podcast was going to include music from many faiths, but it seemed to work better concentrating on songs from the Christian faiths. Hopefully there will be another podcast in the future that will contain songs from other faiths. A couple of the songs are secular songs in a gospel style but the majority are one take recordings capturing the performers singing their Christian praises live. The songs range from very early blues recordings of psalms to ecstatic psychedelic and funk devotionals. The songs included here date from the 1920s to the 1980s. Most of the music is from the US of A but there are also songs from Rwanda and The Congo. The fidelity may be a bit compromised in places due to the quality of the original recordings and the age of the records they were recorded from but whatever the fidelity, the beauty of this music shines through; straight from the soul! 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. None of the tracks are mixed but all are segued together. The mix contains 23 tracks and lasts 76 minutes and the download is a 192kbps mp3 (104mb). Enjoy.

Optimo Podcast 4 - Car Mix

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:23:24 GMT

Towards the end of 2009 I had a car accident. My car was destroyed but thankfully my two kids were unharmed and I only suffered whiplash and a few bruises. The crash left me thinking a lot about my connection with the hunk of metal I spend 2 or 3 hours a day in during the week and sometimes even longer at the weekends. We often do long drives through the night to our gigs in UK and when abroad we're regularly car passengers driving between cities or to and from airports. A lot of this time we're running late, tired, stressed, staring vacantly out the window stuck in traffic or if we're lucky, asleep. I thought it would be fun to podcast some tracks about cars and what they mean to us. The mix is certainly not intended as a eulogy of the open road or a soundtrack to cruising the highway in search of your dreams. It's not "driving" music, rather it's a collection of favourite tracks and sounds about cars and driving. Clunk-Click every trip... The podcast was recorded using turntables, then the levels balanced here and there in Protools. The mix contains 18 tracks and a few effects added for fun, lasts just under an hour and the download is 75mb. Enjoy.

Optimo Podcast 3 - Take A Stroll Through Your Mind

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:41:47 GMT

This Podcast is called "Take a stroll through your mind" and is a selection of songs with a psychedelic feel from around the world. All of the music is from the late 1960s and early 70s (1967 - 1975) when psychedelic sounds spread to all corners of the globe. There is something about the warmth and the tone of this music, especially that fuzz guitar that sends me into ecstasy. It make me feel as if I am wrapped in cotton wool. While psychedelic music can often sound like a bunch of stoners making a freaked out racket, all of the songs here are exquisitely joyous, beautifully crafted pieces of music, often with ideas and production that still sounds ahead of the curve. Not all of these tracks are intentionally psychedelic, but all have that certain something that can transport one to another place and another time. All the tracks were recorded from vinyl and in some cases the records aren't in tip top condition or were fairly poor pressings to begin with (especially the African records), so apologies for the fidelity in a few places. Hopefully the wonder of the music still shines through. 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. None of the tracks are mixed but are all segued together. In order, the tracks are from the following countries - USA / Zambia / USA / USA / USA / UK / Algeria / Egypt / Brazil / Nigeria / Mexico / Mexico / USA. The mix contains 13 tracks and lasts 69 minutes and the download is a 192kbps mp3 (90mb). Enjoy.

Optimo Podcast 2 - Jerk It

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:09:13 GMT

This podcast is called "(All this talk of Disco...) The Jerking Back and Forth Mix". The title (part-borrowed from a from a Devo song) is an indication of the type of involuntary body responses provoked whilst enjoying these songs as well as the sound itself. The new stuff and the old stuff, the local stuff and the stuff from very far afield is united here through a kind of "loose is tight" jerking rhythm and DIY spirit we love. Although all tracks are at their original tempo and of course not "mixed" as such, there is however some kind of a flow (be it a "jerking" one) to the podcast. Again there is no tracklist for reasons outlined in the notes for "Optimo Podcast 01" but again, if anyone really wants to know what a particular track is, we will be happy to tell them. Collected over the past 30 years or so, none of the music is (that) hard to find. The podcast was recorded using turntables, then the levels balanced here and there in Protools. The mix contains 20 tracks, lasts just under an hour and the download is a 192kbps mp3 (80.9mb). Enjoy.

Optimo Podcast 1 - Synth Summer

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:44:49 GMT

This podcast is called "Synth Summer" and is a selection of (guess what?) synth based music from around the planet. It covers a broad range of styles and a broad time span - from 1980 to some tracks that haven't been released yet, and that may indeed never see the light of day. It is a dj mix but not a club mix. The flow is the way it is so as to be a listening experience rather than for the dancefloor, even though all the tracks are "dance" tracks. Wherever possible, as much of each track as possible has been included. There is no tracklist as we think in this day and age with the abundance of mixes available on the internet that people often judge something based on the tracklisting rather than actually listening to it. If anyone really wants to know what a particular track is, we will be happy to tell them. The mix was recorded using two turntables and a laptop. Wherever possible the original vinyl was used but some of the tracks don't exist on vinyl. Track one (which we would like to thank Mr. James Holden for providing us with after searching for it for many years) only exists on a cassette from the early 80s so please excuse the fidelity, although it actually sounds pretty fab considering. A tiny bit of post mix editing was done as one of the tracks skipped during the recording and the levels were a little askew in a couple of places. The mix contains 17 tracks, lasts just over an hour and the download is a 192kbps mp3 and is 84.5mb. Enjoy.