About this item

Optimo (Espacio) started life as a weekly club night. It was born at The Sub Club in Glasgow on a wet, windy, wintry November Sunday night in 1997. Run by JD Twitch and partner in crime Jonnie Wilkes, Optimo was a reaction against what felt like an increasingly conservative musical soundtrack in clubs there at that time. Clubland felt as if it had become very bland and a bit too serious; it was the era of the dawn of the Superstar DJ. Clubs often felt like bastions of male energy. The notion of fun had got lost.

It was no longer the world they had devoted ten years of their lives to already, and lots of their friends felt the same. When the opportunity came up to do a Sunday night at The Sub Club it felt like the perfect opportunity to rip it all up and start again. So they did. There was nothing in the city (or possibly anywhere) like it. (Interestingly, exactly the same thing was going on over here in Manchester with Electric Chair ditching the past around ’96-’97 – Ed)

After about a year and a half, the club went from having 100 people attending most nights to suddenly one week having 500 people turn up. It was very weird. It was as if a collective light bulb went off in people’s heads in Glasgow. From that week on, until the very last weekly Sunday night at the Sub Club, in 2010, over a decade later, it was packed.

There were 550 Sunday Optimo nights. A LOT of music was played. People often find it hard to pin down exactly what Optimo is. This has been a positive but also a negative as we live in a world where people want easily defined brand identities. The simplest definition of the music played is music for dancing, which of course is a very broad definition. Even better than trying to define it in words, we have these 2 volumes of music that give a hint of what that might be.

This is not a “Best of Optimo” or a “Greatest Hits of Optimo” compilation. For people who come to, or used to come to the nights there are of course “Greatest Hits”. But, over such a long timespan they are hits belonging to a certain moment in time and space. Someone who came to Optimo in 1997 would have a completely different notion of the big tracks at the club to someone coming in 2003, or 2010, or today. This compilation is just a snap shot missing several genres that might make up the DNA of Optimo. There is though, a broad sweep through lots of music Optimo loves, that they believe is amazing. Music that they know will rock a dancefloor, that they have played between 1997 and 2023. Of course Optimo nights were not all about rocking the dancefloor. The first hour was always a time for them to play music they loved that often was far removed from the dance. Side 1, Volume 1 of this compilation is the kind of music one might hear at the very start of an Optimo night.
Balearic

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Optimo rightfully sit at the top of the pyramid alongside other storied UK pioneers such as Andrew Weatherall, Terry Farley and Electric Chair. A compilation that's as joyous as it is hard to categorize (a record shop's nightmare infact), there's a little bit of everything across two parts and four discs which perfectly exemplify why this cult night is one of the most celebrated of our nocturnal culture.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Brainticket - Places Of Light 
A2. T.J. Lawrence - Fireplay 
A3. Robert Rental - Double Heart 
B1. African Head Charge - No, Don't Follow Fashion 
B2. Keith Hudson - Nuh Skin Up Dub 
C1. Smokin' Cheeba - When I Was A Youth 
C2. The Wad - 15 Inches 
D1. Idjut Boys & Laj - Foolin' (Beatin On Dave) 
D2. JBB Et Soprann - Tibi Lap