Optimo Espacio is the infamous Sunday club night that has been running at Glasgow's Sub Club since 1997 but on Sunday the 25 th of April 2010 Optimo as a club night will cease to operate on a Sunday in Glasgow. However the DJ duo will continue to tour, promote and release music as Optimo.The club was the brain child of Keith Mcivor aka JD Twitch and Jonnie Wilkes aka JG Wilkes in response to the staleness that had started to takeover the club scene in the late 90's with a genre defying, helter-skelter,take it or leave it music policy that in the end became a Glasgow and world famous institution. I caught up with Keith post gig to ask him a few questions about Optimo over the past 12 years.

"I neither wanted nor intended to be a DJ, when I was 18 or so, I was always getting asked to provide the music at parties and play alongside bands, as I suppose I was renowned for having a lot of music". This accidental foray into DJing has led to a life of constant touring, DJing and music hunting "I spend an inordinate amount of time of my life seeking out both music new and old" . Expanding upon this and at the same time explaining the Optimo ethos Keith says "A valuable lesson I have learned is not to chase the records everyone else is playing and to pay as little attention as possible to what everyone else seems to be doing , I don't want to be part of any scene". This refusal to be pigeonholed and the quality of their DJ sets has led to Optimo being booked to play across the world, when asked about this laughing the answer is "I have learned not to judge a city on one gig. Some of the best have also been the worst.The best reactions have been in Aberdeen, Dundee, Belfast, Dublin, London, Tokyo, Melbourne, Moscow,Portland,Sydney and Beijing" and with a look of exasperation on his face he conspiratorially discloses "Mediterranean countries seem not to get it- lots of bad gigs in Spain, Portugal and Italy but some were good too" he adds . When asked to name a highlight of playing in either Glasgow or abroad whilst touring the reply is "I can't really answer that. There have been a million highlights, I would need to write a book to fit them all in". One highlight eventually acknowledged is Optimo was playing at the 'Change is Here' party for Barack Obama's inauguration in Portland one of America's famed liberal arts cities. Summing up that gig he says "I was ecstatically happy. I am still happy and optimistic for Obama, I would probably be even happier had they elected a gay, black, anarchic-Marxist but you can't have everything...."

Optimo has survived a number of incidents including the burning down of it's original home and subsequent return and heavy media exposure which suddenly meant that the club went from having 90 people there one week, to 500 the next week. The media exposure hit it's peak around 2000 when the 'electro clash' scene started which was basically a reinvention of the old synth pop/no wave scene of the 1980's and as Optimo had always played some of these records in it's across the board policy, it suddenly found itself as the coolest 'electro clash' club in all the music and fashion press. I put it to Keith that perhaps some of this exposure was beneficial to the club or DJ bookings, " Beneficial?, Maybe superficially in that it brought in a number of magazine reading fashion victims to the club who believed that Optimo was this weeks hip place to go. Thankfully we scared them off but maybe a few stayed and had their ears opened and realised that trying to be cool is just stupid. However, on the brighter side the attention we got in the media did lead a lot of people around the world checking out our web site and because of this we have made some great friends".

With Optimo heading to the big finale I leave it to half of Optimo to sum up how it was and what they felt at their Sunday night that constantly bucked the trend " Surprise and shock,Jonnie and I would be powerless to do anything but look at the dance floor in awe and just burst out laughing at this monster we had created that truly had a life of its own'.' But our

hearts are telling us that it is time to call a halt to it.....We hope that the anarchic spirit we brought to the Sub Club in 1997 will continue to prevail on Sunday nights".