Optimo "Kill the DJ"

Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
I was in this absurdly trendy and expensive fashion boutique in Covent Garden buying a present for my wife and I tuned into the music they were playing.

What the! It was this bizarre mash-up of old ardkore and No Wave skronk. Way too drugged-up and freaked out for an emporium such as that. Then I heard a snatch of what i decided HAD to be the Langley Schools Music Project (bunch of Canadian kids singing out-of-tune Carpenters cover versions) and resolved to finally check it out in a bit more detail.

In Glasgow I slipped down to Mono (nods to Steven) and was surprised to find the aforementioned record in the racks. Even more to discover Keith from Optimo in the store. Keith wanted to see what I'd picked up. I showed him the Langley Schools thing and told him about the mix I'd heard which had piqued my interest.

As though he was some kind of visiting salesman (it was incredibly weird) Keith stretched his arm one metre to the wall of CDs on the shop and plucked from it his "Kill the DJ" CD, and proceeded to explain to me that it was his and Johnny's mix. Praising the LSMP version of "Space Oddity" to the skies.

Cool mix innit. I think Keith'll be lurking so people be nice svp :)
 
D

dialectic_bricks

Member
It is such an amazing mix. Manages to be eclectic and fun. Rarely ever striking a false note. #1 on my agenda when I made a trip from hill country here in the States to the U.K. and Scotland last year was to spend a Sunday evening in the throws of Optimo at the Sub Club. One of the most enjoyable experiences I've had in my thirty eight years on the planet. Such a shame that if anyone tried anything similar here in the states the crowd would filled wall-to-wall with arm-folders. At best maybe a handful of dancers on the floor.
 
M

mms

sometimes
yeah it's bossage.
i mentioned this a while back as a good example of an mp3 computer done mix yooknoo. (brushes back dyed black quiff)
rarely is something such fun.
 
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C

Canada J Soup

Monkey Man
dialectic_bricks said:
Such a shame that if anyone tried anything similar here in the states the crowd would filled wall-to-wall with arm-folders. At best maybe a handful of dancers on the floor.
Click to expand...

The recent set by the Optimo guys in NYC was well attended with a fairly lively crowd. It might have been too much in the other direction as far as the Music Nerds vs. Dancing Crowd dilemma goes though ('Smells Like Teen Spirit' with a 4/4 kick got a huge response while neither Rocker Hi-Fi's 'Push Push' nor Remarc's 'R.I.P.' seemed to do very much at all).

I loved the downloadable mixes on the Optimo site so I'll definitely be checking out the CD, but the genre jumping and (live? Live?) mash-ups didn't seem to work in terms of maintaining / building dancefloor energy. Maybe they were just having trouble figuring out what would work best with the crowd they got that night...
 
M

mms

sometimes
Canada J Soup said:
The recent set by the Optimo guys in NYC was well attended with a fairly lively crowd. It might have been too much in the other direction as far as the Music Nerds vs. Dancing Crowd dilemma goes though ('Smells Like Teen Spirit' with a 4/4 kick got a huge response while neither Rocker Hi-Fi's 'Push Push' nor Remarc's 'R.I.P.' seemed to do very much at all).

I loved the downloadable mixes on the Optimo site so I'll definitely be checking out the CD, but the genre jumping and (live? Live?) mash-ups didn't seem to work in terms of maintaining / building dancefloor energy. Maybe they were just having trouble figuring out what would work best with the crowd they got that night...
Click to expand...

i really think uk and us audiences are very different, it's interesting to hear idm kids say they got into it thru n.i.n and not really have any experience of raving or trax records/detroit techno etc.
aphex twin is cool cos cometo daddy is harder and more extreme. sort of like satanisim at the end of the day.
god knows how electro clash developed, us art school europhiles i guess, optimo fall inbetween i reckon.
 
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hint

hint

party record with a siren
mms said:
i really think uk and us audiences are very different, it's interesting to hear idm kids say they got into it thru n.i.n and not really have any experience of raving or trax records/detroit techno etc..
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yeah - the shadow of industrial still looms large in the US when it comes to dance music outside of the house scene. rocking out and getting "amped" rather than getting loose. perhaps it's the legacy of the "disco sucks" movement?

it makes a lot of sense that amon tobin, for example, sells so well over there.

I think there's still a strong desire to connect with the artist as a virtuoso / showman too - admiring the tricksyness of a synth line, drum editing or FX mangling in the same way that you'd admire buckethead's guitar playing, for example.
 
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notoriousJ.I.M

Well-known member
I think Optimo will become to this decade what the Heavenly Social was to the last. It's a fusion of bar and club culture which has been a convergence point for people from disparate scenes. I saw Twitch from Optimo at Sonar 4 years ago, playing off a laptop and decks and it was really going off in the middle of the afternoon. People from all over Europe were going mad for a mix of techno, punk and party tunes. Their shuffle techno re-edit of the Strangler's Golden Brown was tossed into the crowd at the end and I wish I had caught it! Check their label out too, Creme De Menthe rocks but I am gutted that my copy of Bis's electro tribute to Factory records has been lost. :mad:
 
D

Diaz

Well-known member
dialectic_bricks said:
It is such an amazing mix. Manages to be eclectic and fun. Rarely ever striking a false note. #1 on my agenda when I made a trip from hill country here in the States to the U.K. and Scotland last year was to spend a Sunday evening in the throws of Optimo at the Sub Club. One of the most enjoyable experiences I've had in my thirty eight years on the planet. Such a shame that if anyone tried anything similar here in the states the crowd would filled wall-to-wall with arm-folders. At best maybe a handful of dancers on the floor.
Click to expand...

that is why every where sucks. standers should be shocked with stun batons until they get the point or have a seizure.

for instance, i am personally ashamed for those people who did not get they whatever on to r.i.p. that is blatant ball-dropping of the fourth order. likewise, from what i remember of industrial, at least you had kids moving parts of their body to something. lots of grinding and dancing-cheek-to-cheek (wink wink) which always seemed motivationally positive.
 
S

SIZZLE

gasoline for haters
Me and my boy were lucky enough to play at one of their nights in Glasgow. They gave us a side room to ourselves to play all night and we just sat back there and played basically every piece of music we had and people just loved it up. A really great fun experience, great vibe, great crowd, I can't say enough good things about these guys. Big respect!
 
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L

labrat

hot on the heels of love
great EDM (proto new beat ) type mixfrom Betty Botox (aka JD Twitch from Optimo)here...http://www.beatsinspace.net/main.html scroll down a bit
tracklist;Zoviet France - Mohnomishe pt. 7
Whitehouse - You Won't Like It, Sugar
Laibach - Krst
Throbbing Gristle - Dreammachine
The Klinik - Plague
Philadelphia Five - Not Leaving Without Jerry
Signal Aout 42 - Carnaval
Signal Aout 42 - Submarine Dance
SPK - Metal Dance
Hunting Lodge - Tribal Warning Shot
T.D.A. - Faces Of Freedom pt. 1
Ken Lewis - Cosmic Cars Dub
Coil - Further Back And Faster
Force Dimension - Tension
Delkom - Sexploitation
Absolute Body Control - Automatic
Snowy Red - Euroshima (Wardance)
The Incvincible Spirit - Push!
Nightmoves - Transdance
Isolators - Concentrate On Us
Mariah - 心臓の扉
 
straight

straight

wings cru
looks fantastic. We had twitch on last year at the worst promoted night of my life, we did a one off night during the school hols (we relied on the student dollar a lot) and he played to a half empty room, grim. Johny was really sound though, he told me a hilarious yarn about his girlfriend destroying his plush new carpet with explosive diorhea while giving birth
 
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