Speaker 1: Despite being well over a decade ago, my first Optimo
Speaker 1: espatio experience remained seared into memory. I had no idea
Speaker 1: who or what Optimo was at the time, but the
Speaker 1: stark until the Music Stops posters plastered around Dundee University
Speaker 1: had caught my eye. That curiosity carried me later that
Speaker 1: evening to Victorian Library turned nightclub, the reading rooms, and
Speaker 1: into the orbit of Keith macavor and Johnny Wilkes better
Speaker 1: known as J D Twitch and J G. Wilkes. I
Speaker 1: entered to the sound of Talking Head Psycho Killer, which
Speaker 1: somehow felt off a post punk track and a dance club.
Speaker 1: Seconds later, mc iver's mix unfurled into the pumping piano
Speaker 1: house of John Broadwood by Luma. The blend shouldn't have worked,
Speaker 1: but in true Optimo fashion, it felt revelatory. By the
Speaker 1: end of the night, my brain had been rewired. The
Speaker 1: rigid genre lines I fought governed DJ sets had been
Speaker 1: torn down and replaced with a sense of limitless possibility.
Speaker 1: Mc Ivor, who died last Friday, September nineteenth, aged fifty seven,
Speaker 1: was a visionary DJ, label owner, and cultural connector whose
Speaker 1: work had a transformational impact on underground dance floors. As
Speaker 1: one half of Optimo Espasio, he forged a philosophy that
Speaker 1: rejected genre boundaries in favor of pure and motional impact.
Speaker 1: No Wave, disco, dub, afrobeat, techno, industrial, EBM, electroclash, even
Speaker 1: heavy metal were all tools in his arsenal, stitched together
Speaker 1: with a rare precision that never dulled their raw power.
Speaker 1: McIvor came of age amid the post punk wave of
Speaker 1: the late seventies and early eighties, before falling under the
Speaker 1: spell of acid house and the explosion of British rave culture.
Speaker 1: These twin poles, experimental guitar music and club culture's kinetic pulse,
Speaker 1: would anchor his lifelong approach. By the time he co
Speaker 1: founded Optimo at Glasgow's Subclub in nineteen ninety seven, mcgiver
Speaker 1: had honed an open ended, narrative driven style of dejaying
Speaker 1: that resisted easy classification and spoke directly to those seeking
Speaker 1: a sense of dance floor communality. Over the following decades,
Speaker 1: he and Wilkes built Optimo into one of the most
Speaker 1: influential club nights in the world, exporting its ethos across tours,
Speaker 1: festivals and residencies. It speaks to their unwavering passion that Wilkes,
Speaker 1: having learned of mcgiver's death while in Philadelphia for Making
Speaker 1: Time this weekend, still played an Optimo set dedicated entirely
Speaker 1: to mcgiver. Meanwhile, mac Ivor nurtured a community at home
Speaker 1: through his label, Optimo Music and its many offshoots. His
Speaker 1: championing of overlooked artists and marginalized scenes, combined with an
Speaker 1: encyclopedic musical knowledge and disarmingly affable yet stridently opinionated personality,
Speaker 1: ensured his cultural impact extended far beyond the Booth Eight. Friends, contemporaries, inspirations,
Speaker 1: and Optimal Music affiliates share their memories of time spent
Speaker 1: in the presence of an icon who left us too
Speaker 1: soon