Duke Shin

"Sometimes you have to look back to go forward..."

A decade seems like an eternity in the atomic half-lives of club nights. Hot trends grow cold; new sounds get old, but perhaps with the right mix...

JD Twitch & JG Wilkes have been running their infamous Optimo (Espacio) night at Glasgow, Scotland's Sub Club since November of 1997. Their playlists touch an almost incomprehensible span of music. For example? Classic cuts from the Clash to Talking Heads, a strong psychedelic influence from honky-tonk (Lee Hazlewood) to Brazilian (Os Mutantes), techno's soul of Carl Craig and Isolee, even the warm bump of house, from Braxe & Falke to the way-back precursors of Larry Levan. Yes, the cool kids are here, too--cosmic disco, new indie from Peter Bjorn and John, and on and on. JD Twitch (Keith McIvor) explains how a techno DJ becomes (arguably) the godfather to successful current-day parties that seem to ape a similar aesthetic.

"In the mid-nineties, techno became harder and faster and lost the groove, the sex and the innovation that had made me love it so much to start with. The clubs here [in Scotland] became increasingly male dominated and I was bored out of my mind. I stuck with it for a while but I felt like I was in a musical ghetto, and unless I found a way out, I was going to have to find something else to do with my life. Thankfully I found a way out and 'techno'--in the truest sense of the word--found it's way again."

And JD found his way, using Optimo to further his goal of taking musical risks, trying to pull off insane mixes and, most importantly, having fun. Perhaps the biggest challenge in accomplishing Optimo's mission lies in creating a cohesive set with so many different sounds in the mix.

"I think cohesive is the key word," JD agrees. "We do play many styles of music, but the worst thing in the world can be hearing DJs do this just for the sake of it and killing the flow by crashing from style to style. I like to think that we know how to do this without people really being aware that the tempo or the style has radically changed."

Drop into Sonotheque tonight and catch what's sure to be a memorable Chicago debut from one of the great minds working behind the decks. "Your readers should expect the unexpected as I never really know what I'll play until I start," JD concludes.

JD Twitch from Optimo headlines The New Indie Mafia with residents Jordan Z, la Radio, and Ian Hixxx at Sonotheque, 1444 West Chicago, (312)226-7600, on March 2 at 9pm. $10.

(2007-02-27)

Also by Duke Shin

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