KEITH McIvor, aka Optimo’s JD Twitch, may be most famous for his alchemical DJ sets in the world’s most debauched basements, but this weekend he’ll turn his hand to something a lot more family-friendly. The second Sounds of Glasgow event at the Mono cafe/bar on Saturday afternoon will bring Optimo and around a dozen other Scottish labels together to sell records and hang out in an environment that’ll be less strobes and intoxicants and more lunch and amiable pottering.
“The seed of the whole thing was when the Independent Label Market (a large, touring label-market event of the same kind) came to Glasgow a few years ago,” McIvor begins. “I was involved in it a bit reluctantly because I didn’t think people would be that into it, but I was amazed by how good it was. We sold a lot of records, but the more interesting thing was actually being able to interact with the people buying them and being able to see who was buying them, which as a label-owner you usually can’t. It was a lovely atmosphere too, with lots of families there and kids coming up and buying their first-ever records.”
Ever-attuned to a good idea, McIvor decided to hold a similar event of his own. “I’m not sure why Independent Label Market never came back – I think they did an event in Edinburgh subsequently but they haven’t been back to Glasgow – so last year I eventually thought ‘I’ll just do this myself’. We did a little pop-up thing on a Saturday afternoon in Distill in Finnieston with Jonnie (Wilkes, the other half of Optimo) selling Optimo t-shirts and me selling records, and I was amazed again by how well it went.”
WHILE the first Sounds of Glasgow was a single-table, Optimo-only affair, the second one will include stands from a host of other Glasgow labels, plus the Firecracker imprint from Edinburgh. All Caps, Numbers, Akashic and Huntleys + Palmers are among the more established Glasgow labels involved, but room has also been found for some of the smallest labels imaginable. “!2th Isle for example have only actually released one record so far,” McIvor says, “so along with that they’ll be bringing some of their own records along to sell, so there’ll be a bit of a record fair element to it as well.”
With a million and one other plates to keep spinning, McIvor is playing the future of Sounds of Glasgow by ear, but if this one goes well he says the potential is there to make it much larger. “It’s unfortunate that we had to turn a lot of labels down this time just because we only have a certain amount of space in Mono,” he says. “I’ve had one or two people ask if I’ve been a bit elitist about picking the labels taking part, but it wasn’t supposed to be like that at all. I just got in touch with friends of mine who run labels for this one, and didn’t think for a minute that I’d have so many others getting in touch about it. If it gets bigger in the future it’ll just be open to anyone though.
“From a personal point of view it’s also something that’s just really nice for me to do on a weekend when I’m home,” he concludes. “I suppose it comes from a similar place as So Low (the occasional, unmissable cold-wave, minimal synth and industrial night McIvor co-runs at the Poetry Club) in that basically it’s me thinking: ‘I’ve got a weekend at home, what’s a nice, community-based thing I can do while I’m here?’”
Sounds of Glasgow is at Mono at 12 Kings Court, Glasgow from 2pm to 6pm on Saturday. Entrance is free.
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