RESIDENT ADVISOR TOP TEN

RA October Top 10

Resident Advisor Top Ten

RA September Top 10

All The Madmen

In typical Kill Em All style this latest single was snuck out without much fanfare but has already garnered some big support form the likes of Brodinski, Optimo and Jokers of the Scene. ‘Friends’ by a mysterious new act named ‘All The Madmen’ is a truly epic piece of music, starting big and building all the way through it’s tantalisingly short 5 minutes. Soundcloud page here. Download from Beatport here. 

Good Lord

Simon Lord has been busy, there’s a collaboration with Nautiluss on Hemlock that’s definitely worth checking. Then there’s the upcoming Roberts & Lord album, which is really low fi, saturated, psychedelic and fun. Info here. 

Resident Advisor Top Ten

RA August Top Ten

Kill Em All

This Saturday I’m playing tunes at Kill Em All at the Lock Tavern alongside KEA label daddies Filthy Dukes & Stopmakingme and the always excellent ZTG. Pretty good.. right?

OPTIMO

In a quiet teatime bar in Glasgow, chuckling Keith McIvor (aka JD Twitch) is regaling me with tales of his days founding UFO, an Edinburgh one-nighter in the early 90s, which ended abruptly when the Manchester band Paris Angels managed to start a riot between rival Hibs and Hearts fans. “Tables and chairs were flying. The police arrived and arrested the entire club.” UFO morphed into Pure, Scotland’s first techno club – but by the end of the 90s, McIvor was bored by dance music’s “regimented boom-boom”.

So, relocating to Glasgow, he and like-minded pal Jonnie Wilkes decided to start a club where their mates could hear the wildly eclectic music they liked: “anything from Joy Division to extreme noise to Dueling Banjos.”Optimo, held on a Sunday night, didn’t take off at first, drawing just 70 people, but as word got round, it became a Glasgow phenomenon lasting a decade.

New York post-punkers Liquid Liquid (whose song gave Optimo their name) were coaxed out of retirement to play; Franz Ferdinand’s songMichael was inspired by events on the dancefloor. The club even survived a fire, which burned its original building down; last year it finally closed, its founders “worn out”. But the Optimo spirit and name live on ina record label, which releases music with little regard to commercial considerations. McIvor, whose DJ appearances and production work fund his maverick instincts, insists he isn’t opposed to financial success, but it’s not what drives him. “If a commercial band came along who I liked, I’d sign them. But I’ve turned down plenty of acts who became ‘names’ because they weren’t my cup of tea.”

Instead, he wants to share “the years of pleasure I’ve had from listening to records” and release music that might otherwise go unheard. Releases range from the brutal electronic-guitar band Factory Floor toDivorce, an ear-splitting Glaswegian band whose singer “has never sung or written a song, and whose guitarists have never played guitar”. McIvor insists he loves them. Unlike almost every other record company in recessionary Britain, Optimo are having fun. One of their more unusual releases is Green Door Kids’ Musikal Yooth, an album of 10-year-olds doing “amazing” covers of Stooges and ESG songs. “My distributors accept everything I give them, but they’re serious Germans,” says McIvor, unable to contain his laughter. “With that, they just went, ‘Vot is this?!’”

From The Guardian