- Optimo may have spent the last decade-and-a-half standing out from the mass of Glasgow clubs, but in one respect it is similar to countless others: its residents and the night itself have a long, long relationship with the hulking, two-floor Glasgow School of Art Student Union. The thinking person's union—at least until after one's third pint of questionable but unbelievably cheap lager—the Art School has either been the birthplace or an early stamping ground of a staggering number of the nights that have made Glasgow's post-rave clubbing scene so vibrant and important. Optimo residents JD Twitch and JG Wilkes were both regular fixtures there before they joined forces under the Optimo banner in 1997, and from Millennium Eve until 2005 their much-loved Hogmanay parties took place at the Rose Street venue, before moving to the larger Fruitmarket space for the last few years.
Now, however, the days of the Art School, in its current form, being one of the go-to clubs in Glasgow, are numbered: the union and the adjoining studio buildings are due to be demolished in June of this year and replaced by an ultramodern matte-glass deathstar. Comfort may come in the union moving its operations, which currently take in nights such as One More Tune, Bigfoot's Tea Party and Mixed Bizness, to an as-yet-unnamed temporary venue for the projected two-year construction period. But no number of architectural buzz-promises about the new building "moving forward using a new language of light" will fully assuage the fear that a major hole is about to appear on the city's clubbing landscape.
With this in mind, Twitch and Wilkes decided on a return to the old venue for one last Hogmanay party. It had a markedly stripped-back feel compared to previous years, with bells and whistles such as major live guests, expensive decoration and even a raised stage for the DJs foregone in the name of both a recession-acknowledging reduction in admission price and the presentation of a more personal evening from Optimo's core duo.
Streamers, kisses and JD Twitch's own take on "Auld Lang Sine" kicked off the post-midnight portion of the evening, which also took in Nathan Fake's "The Sky Was Pink," a rework of Simple Minds' "Theme for Great Cities" by Wilkes' Naum Gabo project, a fair whack of jacking house and some old electro favourites along the lines of Black Strobe's "Ghosttrack." Opinion wasn't absolutely unanimous on the guests "issue," but I and most of those around me found a great deal to enjoy in this leaner, more linear and more focused night of crate and Macbook-digging, though I'd admit I am still a little scarred by the memory of Bis hoving into view as secret Hogmanay live guests one year in the early '00s.
As the aquatic robot stomp of Cajmere's "Percolator" brought a great evening to a close, a slight but undeniable veil of melancholy descended on the Art School's main hall. Whether this was down to a collective realisation that never again would we ring in the New Year in this most iconic and storied of settings, or a collective first glimpse of the coat queue, I cannot say.