Obituary: Keith McIvor aka JD Twitch, influential DJ who co-founded legendary club nights

Keith McIvor was a Scottish DJ, club promoter, record label boss and occasional music producer, more widely known by his professional alias JD Twitch. Famed for the co-creation of two boundary-breaking club nights – Edinburgh’s Pure and Glasgow’s Optimo (Espacio) – his contribution to the recent history and international recognition of Scotland’s music scene was extraordinary, and his wider influence upon the direction of alternative and popular music was also significant.

McIvor was born in Edinburgh in 1968 to Audrey and Derek McIvor, and raised in Balerno. In 1986, at the age of 18, he moved to Glasgow to study economics and marketing at the University of Strathclyde. He made this choice mainly because his then-girlfriend had opted to study at the University of Glasgow; in fact he disliked the city for the first year, returning to Edinburgh as often as he could, but soon grew to love Glasgow.

His first DJing job was around the same time, at the Backroom club on Edinburgh’s Cowgate, when he answered an advert for a warm-up DJ for the traditional venue-filling period just after 11pm, when nobody danced anyway. Although he had no experience, the much-loved Edinburgh DJ and fashion designer Bobby Grierson gave him the gig, and McIvor discovered he had an aptitude and passion for DJing.

Keith McIvor co-founded Edinburgh’s Pure and Glasgow’s Optimo club nights (Picture: Marissa Costello)

McIvor next started a short-lived club in Glasgow named 1992, named after the planned year of European integration and themed around a musical integration of European sounds, then in 1989 he was hired by Edinburgh promoter Ewan McNaught to DJ at UFO at the Venue, which fused the then-emerging sounds of house, techno and Manchester indie. He was paired with fellow DJ Andrew Watson, although trouble on the dancefloor between Hearts and Hibs football casuals forced UFO’s closure after less than a year.

The night was revived as Pure, its members-only status allowing the promoters control over who was admitted. Under the aliases Twitch and Brainstorm, McIvor and Watson concentrated on the harder edge of the techno spectrum, and Pure became a foundational night in Scottish clubbing, still spoken of with excited wonder by the generation who were there. McIvor in particular was keen to book new DJ guests, bringing huge artists like Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin, David Holmes, Derrick May and Orbital to Edinburgh, in some cases for their first UK appearance.

By 1997 the techno style which had predominantly driven Pure was flagging, so the night went fortnightly (eventually closing in 2000) and McIvor took over the unfashionable Sunday slot at Glasgow’s Sub Club from friends. Roping in Northern Irish DJ Jonnie Wilkes, who had studied and run popular techno nights at Glasgow School of Art, the pair launched Optimo (Espacio) as a chance to play their favourite records, regardless of whether they fitted the profile of traditional ‘club’ music.

For its first few months just a hangout for the pair’s friends and other like-minded individuals, Optimo suddenly took off among an extraordinarily diverse Glasgow crowd, and was packed every week for more than a decade with a range of old-school clubbers, students, artists and musicians. McIvor was particularly pleased with Optimo’s open-minded legacy, pointing to the gender balance of the crowd and the large number of LGBT fans who saw it as a place of welcome and safety.

More than that, Optimo was at the vanguard of a new current in international clubbing, where the perceived purism of electronic music was intermingled with rock, reggae, punk, disco and more. JD Twitch and JG Wilkes, as they referred to themselves, were foundational not just in breaching the boundaries of what was expected in a club environment, but in shifting underground currents which percolated into popular music.

Before they briefly became the most exciting new band in the word, Franz Ferdinand were devoted regulars at Optimo, while James Murphy experienced the night as guitar tech to his friends the Rapture – live bands were a key element of the weekly Optimo experience – and took their inspiration back to New York, where he formed LCD Soundsystem, whose second UK gig was at Optimo. These bands were subsequently integral to and influential upon the sound of guitar-based early 21st century music.

In 2010, after more than five hundred Sunday nights and numerous legendary Hogmanay and Halloween parties, McIvor and Wilkes chose to end Optimo on a high, with a seven-hour special whose playlist included the likes of Blondie, Cabaret Voltaire, Angelo Badalamenti, Nina Simone and Tchaikovsky, alongside club anthems by CLS and Human Resource, and New York post-punks Liquid Liquid’s song Optimo, which gave the night its name. A typical Optimo set, in other words.

The closure was partly to accommodate the duo’s increased demand as international touring DJs, which didn’t let up for the rest of their careers. Yet Optimo continued to play around Glasgow, most recently with a monthly night at the Berkeley Suite, and McIvor also founded his own Optimo Music record label, established another Glasgow night named So Low, and more recently became a partner and programmer at the Watching Trees festival in Wiltshire. He also organised fundraisers for local foodbanks and anti-racism campaigns.

At the beginning of July this year, McIvor broke the news through social media of his diagnosis with a glioblastoma brain tumour, that his condition was untreatable and that he was “currently trying to process this news and prioritising spending precious time with the people I love”. A Crowdfunder was set up by his family to request assistance with private palliative care.

It was testament to the feeling of togetherness and mutual social care in McIvor’s club and in the way he conducted himself generally that the initially-requested total of £50,000 was quickly met, with three times that amount eventually raised. More than two and a half thousand comments were left in tribute by Optimo regulars, international fans and famous DJs, musicians and nightclubs, with any surplus raised going to benefit four of his preferred charities.

Keith McIvor died at the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow on Friday 19th September 2025, with family and friends alongside him. He is survived by his wife Marissa, stepdaughter Amelie, elder sister Julie and stepmother Elizabeth, as well as a musical landscape – especially in Glasgow – which was transformed by his enthusiastic, knowledgeable presence.

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