Beginning of the Heartbreak - Love of Life Orchestra
Optimo are Scottish DJs for whom eclectic is both a complete understatement and kind of an insult. 'Eclectic' sounds dilettantish, instead of conveying how someone can be a total genre-warper but also have depth of knowledge to back it up. I've seen Optimo spin twice, at Studio B and at Fabric's Room Two, and both times they did stuff like go from abrasive Nitzer Ebb blasts to Donna Summer in the span of about 10 minutes, without sounding like schizo ha-ha opportunists. Their mixes can give you whiplash.
Betty Botox is JD from Optimo's ridiculous pseudonym, and the new release is a bunch of insane edits.
"Beginning of the Heartbreak" is an amazing orchestral disco number, mostly instrumental, with a great cinematic build, underpinned by little scratchy kraut guitars. Very good for starting a bike ride. It's also the opener on James Murphy & Pat Mahoney's Fabriclive mix.
on the other end of the spectrum, there's an edit of some random Residents track, which is highly weird and industrial-psychedelic and sounds like it's being beamed in from another planet and you're hearing by mistake, or wrongly because it's designed for alien ears. The rest of the Betty Botox record has some other disco on it but largely it's a bunch of super out-there edits of really wonky non-dancefloor shit, the kind of stuff that makes you cock your head like a confused dog.
