One of the Scottish music scene’s great quirks is its wealth of down-to-earth heroes – and one of the most heroic was Keith McIvor, AKA JD Twitch, who died yesterday after a short, terminal illness. In life and in death, Twitch’s aura was well earned; as Optimo (Espacio), with his DJ partner JG Wilkes, Twitch’s irreverent humour, political action and renegade attitude shifted the axis of good taste on to a broader, wilder plain and inspired generations of clubbers.
In the early 1990s, Twitch co-founded the Edinburgh club night Pure. With Jeff Mills’ first UK gig, he effectively (alongside Glasgow’s Rubadub) brought Detroit to Scotland, side-stepping the decade’s Madchester obsession in favour of a weirder palette of acid house and techno. When Pure ran its course, Twitch switched to Glasgow and formed Optimo (Espacio) with Wilkes in 1997 – and having had a decade of techno dominance, they decided they had other ideas.
