Keith And Sonny

In July Keith McIvor (JD Twitch) announced that he had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and an appeal was started to raise money for his care. On Friday news of Keith's death came out via his DJ partner Jonnie Wilkes. Keith was just 57. He grew up in Edinburgh but moved to Glasgow in 1986 to go to university and became part of the city's dance music underground- at the legendary Pure and then with Wilkes as Optimo with a freewheeling musical policy that took in acid house and electronic dance music, post- punk, electroclash, punk and whatever they fancied playing. The pair continued to DJ as Optimo (named after Liquid Liquid's classic track). Keith as Twitch was also a producer and remixer. I have a load of Optimo productions, remixes and DJ sets. This one of Cold Cave from 2010 is always somewhere near the top of their pile...

Life Magazine (An Optimo Espacio Flexi Pop Mix)

The previous year they were one of the remix teams who took tracks from Journal For Plague Lovers, the Manics album from that year, into new places...

Journal For Plague Lovers (Optimo Espacio Remix)

In 2021 a JD Twitch DJ set was released on tape and then in 2023 onto Bandcamp (free/ pay what you want), two forty five minute sets to raise money for the Glasgow North West food bank. Let There Be Drums is a masterclass in track selection and sequencing, all manner of human and machine operated rums and percussion, hand drums, tribal freak outs, early 90s UK hardcore breakbeats and meditative German forest music. Find it here. 

The outpouring of tributes on social media since Friday by Keith's friends and the wider music/ DJ community is testament to the man and how much he was loved. 

RIP Keith. 

Sonny Curtis died on Friday too, aged 88. Sonny was a member of The Crickets and wrote I Fought The Law, as performed and recorded by The Bobby Fuller Four. Imagine a world without I Fought The Law in it. 

I Fought The Law

In 1979 The Clash released their Cost Of Living EP with their cover of the song as the lead track, an incendiary and career defining song for The Clash, a band with three front men all bellowing the song's title and refrain into their mics...

I Fought The Law (Live At The Lyceum)

On The Cost Of Living EP the song took pole position and was followed by two Clash deep cuts, Groovy Times and The Gates Of the West and the re- recorded version of Capital Radio. The EP then had a brief reprisal of the Sonny Curtis song with Mikey Dread's vocal advertising the EP. Not that this jingle was ever going to be played on the radio (as the band noted in the previous song).

I Fought The Law (Reprise)

RIP Sonny Curtis. 

V.A. Saturday

I'm trying to avoid making this Saturday series just a succession of compilations on Soul Jazz Records but since the 1990s they have become the standard setting label in many ways with what must be close to definitive various artist compilations in reggae, dub, ska, rocksteady, disco, kraut, acid, soul and funk. There are two post- punk compilations on Soul Jazz which came out at a time when sharp, angular, mutant funk/ noise was a big influence on new bands - one was the 2002 compilation In The Beginning There Was Rhythm, an eleven song gold standard compilation that I'll save for another Saturday. It was followed in 2003 by a sixteen song double vinyl/ single CD of late 70s/ early 80s music from New York, a compilation called New York Noise. As a document and round up of that scene it seems pretty comprehensive (although Lydia Lynch is missing) but it shows the influence of those artists on early 21st century hip hop, dance music, electroclash and disco- post- punk/ disco, groups like LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, all those bands that came through in the wake of The Strokes. 

New York Noise isn't always pretty or easy listening. It's intense and experimental and at times smells like damp basements, poppers and dry ice- but it always moves, its always invigorating and its always wants to tell you something is happening. As dance music it sometimes feels like its for the head as much as the feet. It definitely feels arty, the sort of music where you find people who are dressed interestingly- that's a good thing by the way- and that kind of thing can always topple into posing, but there's a time and place for posing and New York between 1979 and 1982 may be exactly that time and place. 

Across the seventy one minutes and sixteen tracks you get familiar punk- funk names- James Chance and The Contortions, The Bush Tetras, ESG, Mars, Theoretical Girls, Konk, DNA, and Defunkt. You also get this by Glenn Branca, a hugely influential wall of electric guitars and the power of repetition (a fundamental part of Sonic Youth's inspiration).

Lesson No. 1(For Electric Guitar)

There's also this by Dinosaur L from 1982, supremely funky and, yes, angular, sounds from Arthur Russell and Peter Gordon, a juddering post- punk bassline, sax and tape FX voices looped, rushing by in and out of time 

Clean On Your Bean

New York Noise opens with Liquid Liquid's Optimo, the title track from an EP that gave hip hop and early rap it's bassline in White Lines. By way of closing the circle Glasgow's Optimo, named after the track, did their own edit of Optimo, doubling the length and turning it up- cowbell, atonal sax, rumbling, thumping drums and percussion, Brazilian funk in early 80s New York retooled in Glasgow. 

Optimo (An Optimo Espacio Mix)

Forty Five Minutes Of Factory Floor And Gabe Gurnsey

Friday's Factory Floor single Two Different Ways sent me back into the group's back catalogue. I've also been playing Factory Floorer Gabe Gurnsey's Diablo a lot recently, an album that is up there with this year's best to these ears. Factory Floor, a trio but then slimmed down to Gurnsey (drums, programming, synths, production, vocals) and Nik Colk (vocals, guitar, samples) started out in the mid- 00s, all post punk dread and industrial noise before hitting a Chris and Cosey inspired, acid house/ techno groove. Dystopic dance music. Synth- noir. No wave electronica. 'Unsettling disco' according to New Order's Stephen Morris who has worked with them (like Morris, Gurnsey is a Macclesfield man). 

The idea to sequence a bunch of FF and GG tracks together seemed like a good one but technically has been quite tricky. I use Audacity where it's a matter of drop and drag, lining them up next to each other, slightly overlapping to give the impression of mixing. But without any actual DJ software, getting tracks to segue and mix properly can be difficult and this one took a lot of playing around with. There were a few that didn't make the cut- Two Different Ways and the Factory Floor remix of Grinderman were both vying for inclusion but didn't make it. 

The tracks here won't ease you into Sunday gently but if you want modular synths, acid squiggles, thumping 808 kick drums, slowly building tension and blank/ sexually charged vocals (courtesy of Colk on Factory Floor and Tilly Morris on Gabe's Diablo) to throw yourself around the kitchen to, then give it a whirl.

Forty Five Minutes Of Factory Floor And Gabe Gurnsey

• Factory Floor: Heart Of Data
• Daniel Avery: Drone Logic (Factory Floor Remix)
• Gabe Gurnsey: Eyes Over
• Gabe Gurnsey: Push
• Gabe Gurnsey: You Remind Me
• Factory Floor: ~(REALLOVE) (An Optimo (Espacio) Remix)
• Factory Floor: Ya

Heart Of Data came out in 2018, a pulsing modular synth score to Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, commissioned by London's Science Museum). Highly recommended. 

The remix of Daniel Avery's Drone Logic came out in 2013 along with a multitude of other remixes from Avery's first album. 

Eyes Over is from Gabe Gurnsey's first solo album, Physical, released in 2018. Eyes Over was a single and came with a very good extended dub mix on the 12".

Push and You Remind Me are two of the standouts from this year's Diablo, both with vocals from Tilly Morris. 'This is the kind of feeling I could ride forever/ Let's push together', Tilly sing speaks on Push, sounding like you're there for her amusement solely. 'You remind me of a sunrise/ You remind me of a good time', she sings on the latter, again sounding like she's pretty much done with your shit. 

Real Love (or ~(REALLOVE) came out in 2011 on DFA and was remixed by Scottish legends Optimo. A track that really goes for it brackets- wise and produced by Stephen Morris. 

Ya was on Factory Floor's 2016 album 2525, a juddering, minimal, floor filling electronic dance record with one foot in the Hacienda. 

Wahre Liebe

Factory Floor's live soundtrack to Fritz Lang's 1929 Weimar sci-fi masterpeice Metropolis comes out today. I've been looking forward to this since the Heart Of Data/Babel 12" came out back in February. Their score is film length, an hour and fifty minutes long, and is out on double cd or quadruple vinyl (and you can imagine how much that costs).



In 2011 Factory Floor's Real Love single was remixed by Glasgow clubbing veteran JD Twitch, a controlled collision of analogue synths and digital drum machines.

Real Love (An Optimo Espacio Mix)

I was showing some young people (16-17 year olds) some clips from Metropolis earlier this week as part of their studies of Weimar Germany and its culture. I don't think the jawdropping special effects or the look of the film or its technical genius of the film was lost on them although some of the acting is very hammy 90 years later. They were equally if not more impressed with Nosferatu which they found genuinely freaky. And then one of them mentioned they already knew Nosferatu from this...

Colder Music

One to blow those post New Year/back to work cobwebs away- this came out in 2006 which seems pretty recent but frighteningly is six years ago. Colder was the name for Marc Nguyen Tan, a French DJ, remixer and graphic designer who made some very post-punk influenced dance music. This was one of his best tunes- To The Music- remixed here by Optimo (Espacio) which means the beats are that little bit crisper, the bass that little bit tauter, it all goes a bit mad around the three minute thirty mark and increasingly mad thereafter. Blinding.

To The Music [Optimo (Espacio) Remix]