- Following their excellent New Year's parties at the Glue Factory over the past two years, Optimo's return to the same venue for 2014 may have seemed like a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." This year's party was, however, originally scheduled to take place at the gleaming new Glasgow School Of Art Students' Union building, which was slated to reopen in December. Inevitably, the re-emergence of that great clubbing space was delayed (it's now scheduled for January 23rd) leading Twitch and Wilkes back to the former warehouse.
Auntie Flo brought an African-influenced strand to last year's party, and this year's event had something similar thanks to Awesome Tapes From Africa, whose cassettes-only show provided a perfect pre-midnight soundtrack in the smaller bar area. The night's live act was Golden Teacher, whose sound JD Twitch has described as "Dinosaur L jamming with Bobby O, K Alexi Shelby, Liaisions Dangereuses, Imagination, some voodoo drummers and Sly & Robbie."
Piano-laden crowd-pleasers ruled the main room in the hour before the bells, with Twitch running through the likes of "Inspector Norse" by Todd Terje and "John Broadwood" from local producer Luma's recent Amesville EP. The ascending synths of Butric's "Up" led into the countdown, with Twitch's bass synth version of "Auld Lang Syne" finally seeing in the new year—but only after some pyrotechnics on the stroke of midnight tripped a fuse switch and led to a few seconds of dramatic silence from the booth, which only added to the moment.
Glasgow City Council's infuriating decision to grant the event only a regulation 3 AM license lent everything about the night a moving-swiftly-on feel, so Golden Teacher took to the stage very soon after the bells. As someone who doesn't currently live in Glasgow, I hadn't yet caught one of this local group's breathlessly lauded live shows, but this performance showed what all the fuss has been about. An all-analogue riot of alternately stuttering and galloping synths, wave upon wave of clattering percussion and Alan Vega-ish, drone'n'yelp vocals, their set ran through "Rashomon," the extraordinary "Dante And Pilgrim" and several other cuts from their two EPs to date, all to uproarious reception. Here's hoping they're able to take this wonderful, deeply physical experience to a wider audience in 2014.
With only 90 minutes until closing time, Twitch and Wilkes' final bout of selections had a distinct "best-of" feel, with Blackstrobe's remix of Tiefschwarz's "Ghostrack," Robin S's "Show Me Love" and The Clash's "Rock The Casbah" popping up amid a blizzard of Optimo classics, and a climactic airing of LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends" sending the hugging throngs out into the night.