Optimo present Dark Was The Night

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  • The DJ duo aim to "invoke the sounds of a dark winter's night" on their next mix.
  • Optimo present Dark Was The Night image
  • Mule Musiq will release new mix from Optimo called Dark Was The Night in January 2014. Though Jonnie Wilkes and Keith McIvor have done scores of commercial and free mixes down the years, Dark Was The Night rivals any of their previous selections in terms of diversity. Across 21 tracks, the techno of Terrence Dixon and Silent Servant mingles with Scottish '70s punk band The Freeze, New York minimal wavers Jeff & Jayne Hudson, Kode9 & Space Ape's new-school dub and experimental cuts from the likes of Nurse With Wound, Hieroglyphic Being and Carter Tutti. The title of the mix is a nod to Blind Willie Johnson, whose song "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" was one of the 27 pieces of music taken on the Voyager space flight in 1977 (known collectively as the Voyager Golden Records). Despite this, Johnson died penniless of malaria fever decades before his music travelled into space: "a moving tale" that inspires both Wilkes and McIvor, a press release says. "We wanted to make a mix CD of dark music but without resorting to cliche about what dark music is," the pair say. "Each mix CD we have done reflects a different part of the night and this mix is our attempt to invoke the sounds of a dark winter's night but at the same time we feel the music is far from being cold and soulless and is full of atmosphere and feeling." The CD arrives eight months on from the most recent Optimo mix, The Underground Sound Of Glasgow, which was overseen solely by McIvor (AKA JD Twitch). This year also saw McIvor start a dance floor-orientated sublabel of Optimo Music called Optimo Trax. Tracklist 01. Grouper - Vanishing Point 02. Jeff & Jayne Hudson - Mystery Chant 03. Terrence Dixon - Lost At Sea (Untitled 3) 04. Jared Wilson - This Love 05. Qx-1 - I Won't Hurt You 06. Roberto Auser - Eclipse 07. Recondite - Cleric 08. Byetone - Plastic Star 09. Kode9 & Space Ape - Sine Of The Dub 10. Hieroglyphic Being - Imaginary Soundscapes 9 11. Silent Servant - Invocation 12. Inigo Kennedy - Cathedral 13. Hecker - Bsf°Tyk 5 14. Nurse With Wound - Ketamineaphonia 15. Carter Tutti - Coolicon 16. Voigt & Voigt - Intro Koenig 17. Holy Ghost Inc. - Mad Monks On Zinc 18. Deadboy - Black Reign 19. Like A Tim - Hurt You One More Time 20. The Freeze - Psychodalek Nightmares 21. Angel Corpus Christi - Dream Baby Dream Mule will release Dark Was The Night on January 13th, 2014.
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