JD Twitch & JG Wilkes on 20 Years of Optimo

As milestones go, the twentieth anniversary of the legendary Optimo (Espacio) duo JD Twitch and JG Wilkes (aka Keith McIvor and Jonnie Wilkes) is a defining moment in Glasgow’s rich dance music history. Their weekly Sunday-night parties at Sub Club ran from 1997 to 2010 and soon accrued cult status, celebrated for their innovation, debauchery and anything-goes attitude to music. Since 2010, the pair have continued to play, tour and release music under the Optimo name – they are globally respected and renowned as one of Scotland’s most iconic clubbing duos.

2010, the year that the weekly Optimo parties drew to a close, also marked the end of 13 years of Labour government rule in the UK. Interestingly, the day we meet McIvor and Wilkes at a popular Glasgow beer garden also happens to be the day before the UK general election. The conversation inevitably turns to politics, with the pair both feeling a sense of unease about the impending result.

"I think it’s a very scary time," says McIvor. "People say clubbing is not a forum for talking about politics, but I think that’s wrong. I don’t think people should necessarily ram it down one’s throat, but there’s no point running away from it. It’s an important platform to talk about issues. Especially with another [potential] five years, [or] ten years of Tory rule, it will have implications on people who like to go out clubbing. We don’t know what those implications will be, but we know it’s not going to be good."

The subsequent election result may have been an ominous blow to the nation’s underground cultural institutions, but McIvor and Wilkes are still doing their hardest to keep Scotland’s club scene thriving. To celebrate their 20 year milestone the duo have masterminded Optimo 20, a personally curated mini-festival that will take place at The Galvanizer’s Yard, a brand new event space in Glasgow’s West End. The upcoming event aims to champion the eclectic music and ethos that has underscored Optimo from the beginning.

"We mulled over doing big events before and hadn’t really wanted to, and we felt like this was something deserving of doing one," McIvor says. “People like to pigeonhole things into small boxes, like ‘What is Optimo, what do you play?' It’s quite hard to sum that up in one little sentence, so the idea behind the line-up was to say, 'Well, this is Optimo.'" Wilkes continues, "It is intended to be expressive of our ethos. There are artists that played at our original party at the Sub Club, and artists that we’ve only become aware of in the last couple of years." With a laugh, McIvor adds, "We weren’t really thinking about what would sell a lot of tickets, which is the way most people approach it... which is probably the wrong way to approach it."

With a diverse line-up of local and international talent, including Ben UFO, The Black Madonna, Aurora Halal, Happy Meals, Midland and Carla dal Forno, a generous portion of the event is dedicated to live acts. McIvor admits: "We’ve always been more interested in producers than DJs. There’s loads of great DJs in Glasgow, there’s a whole load of young, upcoming people, but my personal interest has always been in going out to see music live. And I think, especially in Glasgow, we have an unbelievable wealth of talent. I’m fortunate that I get to release quite a lot of these artists on my label.”

We point out that the festival also offers a welcome gender balance. It’s an element that is still surprisingly and inexcusably absent from many dance music events today, they both agree. "We didn’t do it in a tokenistic way," McIvor tells us, "it was genuinely people who we felt aligned so closely and we’ve always been drawn to, people we’re friends with. It also shows that it wasn’t hard to do this! It wasn’t like, 'How are we going to find all these [female acts]'… it was very, very easy to do. I think a few festivals pay lip service to it, and they book a couple of token acts, but I think it should just be a natural thing, you should be trying to make it as equal as possible."

Along with an exciting new location and a dream line-up, McIvor and Wilkes will be donating a portion of the profits from the event to Glasgow’s Coalition For Racial Equality & Rights and to various Glasgow foodbanks. "It’s something we’ve had a long relationship with," states McIvor. "We’ve had fundraisers for the last four or five years… being rooted in your local community has always been an important part of Optimo. Particularly Glasgow, it has some problems – I think it’s the highest level of foodbanks in any city in Scotland, if not the UK, and to us it was just intolerable to live in a city where there’s such a disparity of wealth. It’s an opportunity for us to draw attention to these issues, and also raise some money for them."

This spirit of generosity and inclusivity has always underscored Optimo – in the intervening years McIvor and Wilkes have observed many changes in Scotland’s clubbing scene. "When we started there wasn’t internet!" McIvor exclaims. "I think I knew two people that were online. You didn’t use the internet at all to promote events, it was all word of mouth. We had quite a long gestation period – in the first year-and-a-half very few people came to Optimo. It was literally people we knew and a handful of other people. It took a year and a half for that word to get out there, whereas now it’s just so fast."

"We’re still at a loss to figure out exactly why it became as popular [as it did]," Wilkes reveals. "As Keith says, there’s a lot of this DIY ethos that still exists and always had, it was there from before we started out, with the explosion of rave music. People were getting together and building these parties and events themselves. It was about that feeling of togetherness."

Wilkes also laments the changing nature of audiences at today’s more mainstream events, "There seems to be a lack of actual participation or involvement in the moment," he says. "You can tell because people are texting when they’re on the dancefloor!" As for the ubiquitous 'here-we-fucking-go' chant that inevitably starts up on Scotland’s dancefloors, McIvor laughs, "Sometimes we’ll go places and it’s literally a sea of guys pumping their fists with their tops off, and for me that’s just so not appealing," he laughs. Wilkes interjects, "I think women are put off by that, that’s not fun for them!"

"I used to hate that [chant] so much I’d actually stop the music! Now we’d just be doing that all the time, I’d have to constantly stop playing!" McIvor says, and the two burst into laughter. "But it follows us right round the world, we’ve been in Australia and had people [chanting]… we take it as a compliment, but we’re like, 'Are you not bored with this chant?!'"

The pair both remain humble and slightly bemused at the level of fame they've reached with music fans. Do people ever recognise them in the street, we ask? "Yes, especially in Glasgow!" responds McIvor. "All the time. I’ve never had anyone come up and be rude, but it’s these strange things… I used to go into my local sandwich shop, and the woman behind the counter would always call me Twitch. It was nice, but also kind of excruciatingly embarrassing!"

Optimo is a working relationship "longer than some marriages" the pair agree, but they cite the enduring partnership as "like family". McIvor explains: "We very quickly realised we both had things that we were good at that we could focus on, and it’s been like that ever since. It’s kind of been a division of labour." And during their off-tour moments they try to spend plenty of quiet time with their families: "It’s not like we’re going down the pub every night together!" Wilkes tells us with a laugh.

Even after twenty years, it’s difficult to sum up the impact that Optimo has had on Scotland’s music scene. But when it comes to their love for what they continue to do, McIvor hits the nail on the head. "We’re deadly serious about music, but within that you can have fun with music! A night out should be fun, with the deepest, most mind-blowing music, it should lift people up and leave them going home in a better mood than when they arrived." Two decades on, that may well be the best way to describe the ethos and enduring legacy of Optimo.

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Optimo 20, 6 Aug, Galvanizer's Yard at SWG3, Eastvale Pl, Glasgow, tickets £40