For more than a decade, Optimo was one of the hottest clubs in the world.

Few club nights have made more of a dent in the international psyche as Optimo, the Glasgow weekly party born at the Sub Club in 1997 that lasted for more than a dozen years. Founded by DJs JD Twitch (Keith McIvor) and JG Wilkes (Jonnie Wilkes), Optimo dropped the needle on a wild, varied mix of songs that transcended genre and leapt through time, connecting movements through skillful, beat-matched transitions.

Born just as the internet was becoming a thing, the party earned legendary status through early online forums and chat rooms, where word of their sets generated envious buzz. Just as Larry Levan had mixed R&B, Latin dance, disco, funk, international groove music and proto-house, Twitch and Wilkes blended experimental synth music, rock, house, techno, electro and global rarities to create epiphany after epiphany.

The club’s trajectory was propelled by that ineffable quality that drives success: buzz. As conveyed in release notes to the new two volume Above Board Projects collection Optimo 25: We Love Your Ears, the ascent was gradual.

After about a year and a half, the club went from having 100 people attending most nights to suddenly one week having 500 people turn up. It was very weird. It was as if a collective light bulb went off in people’s heads in Glasgow. From that week on, until the very last weekly Sunday night at the Sub Club, in 2010, over a decade later, it was packed.

Word spread, slowly. Lots of people checked it out. Many loved it, some hated it. The core of the Optimo idea was to embrace music they loved that might work on the dancefloor from whatever era or genre they thought felt right. It might not seem very radical now but at that time it was revolutionary.

More than a quarter century later, the Optimo brand is a quality trademark. If it’s Optimo connected, the release, mix or remix will contain lots of heat. We Love Your Ears wrangles hotness from across the club’s run. We’ve got a few copies available in the shop. The release notes explain the conceit:

There were 550 Sunday Optimo nights. A LOT of music was played. So, what was the music? People often find it hard to pin down exactly what Optimo is. This has been a positive but also a negative as we live in a world where people want easily defined “brand identities”. The simplest definition of the music played is “music for dancing”, which of course is a very broad definition. Even better than trying to define it in words, we have these 2 volumes of music that give a hint of what that might be.

Specifically, here’s the track list for volume 1 of We Love Your Ears:

Tim J. Lawrence – “Fireplay”
Robert Rental – “Double Heart”
African Head Charge – “No, Don’t Follow Fashion”
Keith Hudson – “Nah Skin up Dub”
Smokin’ Cheeba – “When I Was A Youth”
The Wad – “15 Inches”
Idjut Boys – “Foolin’ (Beatin’ On Dave)”
Chris & Cosey – “Take Control”
Isolators – “Concentrate On Us”
Mike Dunn – “Life Goes On”
KC Flightt – “Voices (Dub Mix)”
Hannah Holland – “Ekotypic”
XS-5 – “I Need Love (Extended Dance Version)”
Liquid Liquid – “Optimo”

You could spend months absorbing the mixes that Optimo, especially Twitch, has released over the years. The breadth of his knowledge is ridiculous, as the above Lot Radio set confirms. Below, a sleepy-time mix that Twitch made for the now defunct Those Vitamins. The first in a series, it was “made to be listened to in, the small hours of the night.” It’s a trip.

Coil – All The Pretty Little Horses
Holger Czukay – Dark Moon
Current 93 – Patripassian
Raymond Scott – Sleepy Time
?
?
Chris & Cosey – Allotropy – 1st Movement
Chris & Cosey – Allotropy – 2nd Movement
Thomas Koner – Ruska
No-Man – Days In The Trees – Reich
Nurse With Wound – Funeral Music For Perez Prado
Derek Jarman – Mad Vincent
Bohren & Der Club Of Gore – Maximum Black
Tuxedomoon – Muchos Colores
Angels Of Light & Akron – Awake
Robert Wyatt – Amber & The Amberines
?
Atom Heart – One Atomsecond
Coil – Baby Food
Sad World – Apadana
Conrad Schnitzler – Ballet Statique
Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto – Morning
Rapoon – Alchiva
Bee Mask – Deducted From Your Share In Paradise
Arthur Russell – ?

As mentioned above, you can grab the first volume of We Love Your Ears in our shop.