By putting techno, punk, funk and more on an even footing, the Scottish DJ – who has died aged 57 – fearlessly united factions in underground music
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ne of the Scottish music scene’s great quirks is its wealth of down-to-earth heroes – and one of the most heroic was Keith McIvor, AKA JD Twitch, who died yesterday after a short, terminal illness. In life and in death, Twitch’s aura was well earned; as Optimo (Espacio), with his DJ partner JG Wilkes, Twitch’s irreverent humour, political action and renegade attitude shifted the axis of good taste on to a broader, wilder plain and inspired generations of clubbers.
In the early 1990s, Twitch co-founded the Edinburgh club night Pure. With Jeff Mills’ first UK gig, he effectively (alongside Glasgow’s Rubadub) brought Detroit to Scotland, side-stepping the decade’s Madchester obsession in favour of a weirder palette of acid house and techno. When Pure ran its course, Twitch switched to Glasgow and formed Optimo (Espacio) with Wilkes in 1997 – and having had a decade of techno dominance, they decided they had other ideas.
They stencilled “Optimo Sundays. You won’t like it, sugar” and “Optimo says it’s not as good as it used to be” on to flyers, positioning themselves as a honeypot for freaks. Optimo (Espacio) shoved an elbow into the club scene’s ribs, eschewing Detroit and Chicago worship for a ferociously agnostic take on genre. DJ sets had ESG’s avant-pop woven into Parliament-Funkadelic’s righteous jams, Nitzer Ebb’s EBM stompers into Donna Summer’s sensual drum machine riffs.
