Optimo (Espacio) Podcasts

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.