Optimo's JG Wilkes on longevity, odd venues and LCD Soundsystem

Optimo (Espacio) began as a weekly club night at Glasgow's Sub Club, which ran from 1997 until 2010. It was founded by resident DJs Jonnie 'JG' Wilkes and Keith 'JD Twitch' McIvor, and named after the Liquid Liquid song Optimo. Their residency was legendary for its' energy, eclecticism and legendary guests, like LCD Soundsystem and Franz Ferdinand. They have toured Europe, America and Japan, and regularly host radio shows on NTS. JD Twitch passed away from a brain tumour in September and tributes were paid to him from musicians and fans all across the globe. JG Wilkes is carrying Optimo forward on his own with Keith's blessing and encouragement. We spoke to Jonnie about Optimo's longevity, legendary venues, James Murphy and the next generation of Scottish DJs.

DB: You’ve been on the scene for a long time. You’re still pulling huge crowds and you’re still so popular, selling out venues all across the globe. How does it feel for you that your nights have such a lasting impact?

JG Wilkes: I suppose it’s a bit different nowadays — the way new artists are propelled and quite quickly elevated into a big "career". It can happen so quickly now, and it can happen in all sorts of ways -  through pure raw talent occasionally one would hope, clever management, powerful social media channels. Whatever, it seems to be a quicker route to success for many DJ’s these days which is cool, but I suppose very different to how we came up. Optimo the weekly club didn’t start until 1997, and our touring work didn’t really take off until 2004. We’d both been playing a lot locally - with a little bit of travelling but not a great deal. We were skint and but were playing gigs consistently for years before we got noticed and before Optimo really took off.

We always, throughout our career, were very cautious about what we accept in terms of gigs - in the sense that it needed to be the right context for what we do. Or at least we could use the opportunity to do what we do and make it fun. I think if you learn your craft slowly, authentically and stay consistent like that, it tends to lead towards longevity in a career - I hope! Whereas very often someone who ascends really, really quickly can crash really, really quickly as well. The most important thing to us was to always be playing in an individual way that was really us and not get swept along by fads. I’m always looking for new music of course and I’m always wanting to play new music, stuff that I don’t know, or stuff that’s new to me. Things always come along that are really exciting, things I’m dying to play out. That's the fun of it.

I think to build a long career there surely has to be some depth to your thinking around what you do, obsession even, total commitment to your art form. If being popular is your priority, then that’s fine. It's not mine. I’m sure most people could make themselves popular for a while. There are strategies for doing that nowadays but that was never really our remit. Our remit was to play in a way that we thought was exciting, explorative, anarchic even - whether or not it was interesting to the masses or not was kind of irrelevant. It was about what we brought to the party or the festival then and there.

DB: On that topic of people coming to shows... Who is the coolest person you’ve had at an Optimo show? Whether playing or in the crowd.

JG Wilkes: I mean we’ve put on so many iconic artists over the years, you know - the likes of Grace Jones, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, ESG, Liquid Liquid, LCD, Sly and Robbie - legendary artists I guess but also loads of lesser known stuff we just really loved - Nurse With Wound, Throbbing Gristle... We put on loads of bands early on, bands that went on to become really big. I remember LCD Soundsystem in the Sub Club basement. Before that The Rapture played - James Murphy [of LCD Soundsystem] was actually their sound engineer when they came to play. He handed me a 12 inch, and said, "this is my own band, you might like this." And it was 'Losing My Edge'. I took it home and I was like, "Fuck, what’s this?" This is mental. Then the single came out, so they came to play the club.

We never booked DJs at Optimo. The residency ran for 12 and a half years, and we booked three or four DJs in the first year, and then we thought, "fuck it, we’re not going to book any DJs, there’s no point." We didn’t want to do that - it was something that we just wanted to play at ourselves and didn't need to go down that route of "the guest DJ". So, we would book bands. We would book local bands that had literally got together a week before, unknown, or really oddball, experimental stuff. We used the residency [at Sub Club] as a place where we could do stuff that was often quite confusing. At that point, the Sub Club had been a strictly house and techno club, and it was really, really unusual to put a live band in there, but we would build a stage and put bands on every other week. Sometimes you’d upset an awful lot of people, but sometimes you would be turning people onto stuff that they never really thought they would encounter in a nightclub. We wanted to disrupt things at the time because club culture was so dull in the late 90s and early 2000s. That was kind of the motivation for starting Optimo, you know.

I guess we had quite a lot of famous visitors that came along to the club, but our policy was that we would always make them queue as well. There would never be somebody getting out of a taxi to just slide into the club 'cause the queue was always round the block. That would be a terrible look if we were giving priority to someone who just happened to be well known. Generally speaking, they were happy to stand in the queue, 'cause the queue was really good fun, sort of the first part of the night, integral.

For me personally, I was really thrilled to see Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry sitting in the basement of Planet Peach, with his cap on with CDs all hanging off it. It was like being in the presence of this mythical creature. It really was. But the club was the sort of place that the people who went along wouldn't have been all over somebody like that in the club because it was just full - everybody was an oddball, so it didn't really matter. Nobody got any preferential treatment - it was very grounded in that sense.

DB: What’s your favourite venue to gig at?

JG Wilkes: We’ve played in so many unusual venues. Some are purpose-built clubs. Phonox, where we have our London Residency, is a purpose-built club and these can often be quite soulless places. But that room just really, really works, even though it’s kind of simply a square room, red light and an amazing sound system. It works as a club, and it’s a great booth to play in. The sound in the booth and in the room is the best out there. The engineer is always present, and the sound is just so perfect. There’s really, really special small clubs throughout the world. Robert Johnson in Frankfurt, amazing. Panorama Bar, [upstairs at Berghain, Berlin] amazing.

We were lucky enough to play at Yellow, in Tokyo, and I was really so taken by the level of care for the system and for the artists and for the sound - it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. The engineer is just in the club tuning the system, on the speaker stacks, in the booth. You go up there to play, and the needles are sitting on a velvet cushion with cleaning fluid and tiny paint brushes to clean them. It’s just laid out so beautifully - it’s gone now, but that was one of the first places I went where I was like, "That’s how to do it.” That level of thought going into what you do when running a venue.

We had a residency at a really amazing club in Amsterdam called Trouw, which was an old newspaper factory, and that was a great space. Also, we’re really lucky in Glasgow to have Berkeley Suite and the Sub Club. Both with great systems, but the spaces are so totally different, and it feels totally different to play in each. Sub Club always has been an iconic venue but it's nice to see a small place like the Berkeley Suite getting so popular amongst international artists. It's really, really good for them. They really care about the sound and stuff in there.

We’ve played at so many incredible places, they're all different and they all have something unique about them. We’ve played in a lot of really amazing temporary spaces as well. One of the most unusual places we played was in a Sumo wrestling stadium in Tokyo. Pretty strange, but a really amazing experience. In contrast - a couple of weeks ago I played in an ice cream van in Birkenhead at the KLF / Peoples Pyramid / Day of The Dead Ceremony. Also great. I feel really fortunate to get those types of opportunities.

DB: You mentioned the differences between Sub Club and Berkeley Suite – we can see the differences in terms of layout. What differences stand out for you as a performer?

JG Wilkes: The sight lines are kind of different. One of the things I like to do before I play is to be in the space. I think the dimensions and the type of space that people are in really, really affects their energy, and affects us all as a group being in a space. Those two clubs are a different orientation completely - the Sub Club feels like it's wider in front of you, whereas the Berkeley Suite feels like it's longer in front of you, and you don't see so much to the back. You’re focused on the crowd that's close. When you DJ in that way, by engaging with people and actually watching your crowd really carefully, you're doing that in a different way in those two spaces.

We did over 750 parties in the Sub Club. It's a lot. People play three or four times a year somewhere and they're like, "oh it's a residency." When you play every week, for as long as we did, you really, really get to know that room. And you really, really get to develop the way you play. And the relationship you have with your crowd in your city becomes so strong and connection becomes so deep that you really depend on one another. I think that's what's so important about a residency. And that's why I think people who serve long residencies become good DJs. It's not that your confidence gets better, it's just that you become better because there's a natural familiarity with the space and with the sound in the room.

You begin to become more adventurous, and you begin to take more risks. You're able to push your craft further. I think that only comes with that kind of familiarity with a room and a group of people. Playing for years and years and years in one space might be a load of rubbish, but it's something that I felt that was important to us, in maintaining a consistency and a belief in what you do.

DB: On that, when you're talking about these young DJs that are impressing you. Who are these names in Scotland that we should look out for, that are exciting you at the minute?

JG Wilkes: I think Amy Rodgers (of Good Clean Fun) is a great DJ, DJ Peanut, Plastic GRN, Corran too. So many of the Clyde Built Radio residents are dotted around line-ups in the city now and playing great parties. EXIT is hosting loads of brilliant younger artists in their program which is really vital. We're lucky to have that space.

DB: What should we look out for from Optimo in the next couple of months?

JG Wilkes: I've got eight more gigs till January and then I'm taking a month off. Then my diary gets really, really busy for next year. We have a little festival, along with Ransom Note, called Watching Trees, which is in May. It’s in its fourth year now. It's something that I put a lot of time and effort into, the curation of that and making that really the best it can possibly be. I'm bringing loads of exciting artists to that. And I'm really, really... really, excited for that.

Next year I've got some special back to backs lined up : at Dekmantel Selectors with Hunee, and at Nuits Sonor with Paula Tape. I'll be in São Paulo to play Gop Tun 2026 Festival. There's the Bugged-Out Weekender, my Phonox Residency, parties at Fold, The Jazz Cafe, quite a few festivals in the UK and Europe, and a couple of tours in US - so aye, the diary is pretty busy.