Optimo Walkabout
Few selectors can roam as deeply or as broadly through underground music’s teeming treasures with […]
Few selectors can roam as deeply or as broadly through underground music’s teeming treasures with as much acumen as Glasgow-based DJs Jonnie Wilkes and JD Twitch (a.k.a. Optimo). Their How To Kill the DJ series raised expectations stratospherically, and Walkabout continues their streak. Previous Optimo releases stressed their penchant for forging logical segues from illogical juxtapositions. With Walkabout, they focus more cohesively on headfuck minimal techno, with interludes of ill atmospheric pieces (by Boris and Godsy), to stunning effect. Throbbing Gristle’s “Walkabout” subverts the disc’s grand motif with unsettling undercurrents, a point further driven home by Pan Sonic, Philus, 6k, and others. Walkabout triggers paranoia-check the chilling transition from Suicide’s “Radiation” into Eventell and Metaboman’s “Control A Zoid”-while freeing your ass to move into clubland’s Twilight Zone.