What JD Twitch and JG Wilkes started in a basement club in Glasgow has continued for 25 years, creating a musical mythology that has tumbled onto dancefloors in Lithuania, Brazil, Japan, Germany and everywhere in between. The DJ partnership started as Optimo in Sub Club, bringing a creative energy that defined a scene.
Belfast-born Jonnie Wilkes had recently graduated from the Glasgow School of Art when it all began. “There was no game plan” he says. Keith McIvor was DJing at a more techno orientated night as JD Twitch when a change of roster presented the chance to take over the Sunday night at a time when Sub Club was providing a platform for Glasgow electronic music to establish its credentials.
“We had a mutual belief that dance music didn’t have to be strictly 4/4 and that house and techno was driving into a corner. The audience was becoming a bit toxic, it was not really much fun to be at a club. We wanted to open it right up, play different parts of our record collections and focus on the dancefloor. We wanted to see what happened when we brought other modes of performance into the club” he says.
Jonnie emphasises how emotionally invested the pair were in making the Optimo Espacio club night work, and the fact that it was by no means an instant success. “We put the energy in, we really believed in it. Although we didn’t have tonnes of ambition for it to grow into anything more than a fun gathering on a Sunday night. It was a real mishmash of people from the art world and the live music scene in a room with the people who were quite purist about their electronic music.”
Sub Club owner Mike Grieve decided to stick with it and that it would grow. “I don’t know what happened, but after about a year and a half, things just took off” Jonnie says. “We did every aspect of it, making the nights weird and exciting, then suddenly the club was full for the next 12 years.”
That late nineties Glasgow club scene spawned a wave of bands and artists, many of them making connections around the dancefloor. Looking back, Jonnie says: “It really was a place where different bands and scenes were together. You had people who played in guitar bands meeting people who could programme drum machines or work effects. There was a movement that way with music at the time and we could see it happening before our eyes at the club.”
“We would host bands and things grew out of that. People felt very comfortable and unintimidated, they would dress in a really interesting way. We all met at the club but it was also about what happened later and how we all grew as a big community in Glasgow.”
The collaboration outlived its Sunday home to continue as a DJ team, producers and record label owners. The spirit of that formative era will be recaptured at Queen’s Park on Saturday 30 April for the Melting Pot x Heverlee festival, marking the Optimo 25 year anniversary and bringing together local talent including Nightwave, Free Love and Bemz.
Optimo broadcast for Movement Radio in Athens and continue their social activism, raising money for local food banks and anti-racist organisations.
Their music is finding a new generation of listeners and Jonnie thinks we are seeing a resurgence of nightlife across Scottland. They’ve resumed their touring schedule, built around gaps for a bi-monthly residency at Berkeley Suite in Glasgow. There is also a new Optimo 25 mix compilation release.
“The resident DJ is a dying breed so that’s important for us, getting to know a space well and having a crowd that has faith in you” he says. “Then you can kick open a few doors in for the music. The last few times, my nephew was there with his pals and he’s 18 years old, then there are a couple of folk there that were 70. It’s about a feeling in the room where none of that matters. It’s beautiful to see.”
This feature was published in the May edition of Best of Scotland magazine.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here