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.

Volume 2 sees the duo pick up the pace, detailing some of the tracks that would comprise of the peak time dancing sessions at the fabled club. There’s house, techno and industrial sounds from the UK, US and afar. Plus the titular disco-not-disco track that would become their nom de plume – Liquid Liquid’s “Optimo”.

Balearic

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: The second instalment from the almighty Optimo delving into more hits that made their 25 year running gathering such a cult success. There's more house music than on volume 1, showcasing their love of 4/4 that was equally at home here in Manchester with nights such as Electric Chair. A true treasure of UK culture, all hail Optimo!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Chris & Cosey - Take Control 
A2. Isolators - Concentrate On Us 
B1. Mike Dunn - Life Goes On 
B2. KC Flight - Voices (Original Dub Mix) 
C1. Faze Action - Good Lovin' (Special Disco Mix) 
C2. Hannah Holland - Ekotypic 
D1. Divine - Shake It Up 
D2. XS-5 - I Need More (Extended Dance Version) 
D3. Liquid Liquid - Optimo