Optimo will head our way next month to participate in Melbourne Music Week. In Melbourne we’re quite proud, often boastful, about our music scene. Optimo, similarly, are longtime champions of their hometown scene. “Ever since I can remember Glasgow has had a thriving and innovative music scene,” Wilkes says. “For a city of half a million people, it’s quite incredible the number of new bands that come along and the number of live gigs it’s possible to attend in a single week.”
While Optimo stopped weekly club operations four years ago, they didn’t disappear from the Glasgow scene. In fact, Wilkes and Twitch host an event every second month, which regularly spotlights local talent. On top of this, they’re behind the Optimo record label, which also fosters the city’s leftfield music scene. “There’s always new stuff emerging and musicians from different bands collaborating on new projects,” Wilkes says. “Check out new Glasgow two-piece Laps on Clan Destine Records, who feature on the Optimo mix for triple j.”
Twitch and Wilkes are certainly proud Glasgow denizens, but it’s unlikely they could’ve upheld an irrepressible party-starting reputation for the past 17 years if they’d blindly supported everything bearing a Glasgow post code. “The fact is that there is a lot of really great music produced here in Glasgow and so we support that if we can,” Wilkes says. “However if it wasn’t any good, we wouldn’t play it. We feel privileged to be a part of it and to be in a position to support artists by hosting bands we love and releasing music we really believe in.”
Given the current music industry climate, a network of solidarity and kinship among musicians – and others whose lives are invested in music – is important for preserving authenticity and spreading the word about quality music. This is something that Melbourne Music Week both celebrates and enhances. Wilkes says a similar spirit permeates Glasgow. “In my experience of living in Glasgow as an artist myself, and someone who has been in the position of hosting a lot of new young bands at the club, the spirit of kinship is alive and well.”
Optimo’s support for Glaswegian culture extends beyond what happens in clubs on the weekend. For instance, in the wake of the last month’s Scottish independence referendum, all proceeds from an Optimo gig were put towards providing food for people in Glasgow’s poorer areas. “That was a great experience for us all,” says Wilkes, “The plan is to continue with a program of fundraising events in 2015, on a larger scale in fact. It’s a disgraceful state of affairs that we need food banks in Glasgow. However, the fact remains that the government has failed the poorest in our communities. We have always strongly believed in ‘community’ and a DIY approach is integral to everything we do. So, we pledge an ongoing commitment to doing what we can to help the people in our community who are in the greatest need.”
The fact that they’re such proud Glaswegians could suggest Twitch and Wilkes would be reluctant to ever leave. However, Optimo’s gig schedule requires they be away from home for a significant portion of the year. As it turns out, Wilkes is more than happy to venture around the world with his partner in crime. “[We] never feel reluctant to leave. Getting to travel is amazing and the fact that we are a duo means we always have company, which is important too. It’s a nuisance when you get delayed and let your loved ones down by getting home later than planned or getting sick on tour or losing your records after a transfer, but you won’t hear us complain much.”
Upon Optimo’s late-‘90s inception, Twitch and Wilkes quickly gained notoriety for pushing past the confines of techno and filling their DJ sets with everything from funk, post punk, noise rock, electro and ’50s swing. Adopting a boundless approach to DJing could of course upset certain crowd members, but it hasn’t obstructed Optimo on the path to popular repute. In fact, it’s become their leading character trait.
“That’s something that just comes naturally to us, I think,” Wilkes simplifies. “Music is music. I think it’s been a case of always being willing to try something new or something at least previously not known, in other words, new to me.
“Within any style or genre that one initially might find distasteful, it’s always possible to discover within it. Maybe first looking for the better end of it is important and then maybe finding a gem in there somewhere when you least expected it. It’s better to not shut anything off completely.”
Optimo evidently keep their ears alert for exciting, adventurous new music to include in their DJ sets at all times. But they also refer back to plenty of old favourites.
“I’m always pulling out records I shelved years previously,” Wilkes says, “which relate somehow to the new material and that I can play alongside [it].”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
