Powell and Helena Hauff take on JD Twitch’s cold wave compilation

Two of the Optimo man’s picks now have a distinctive twist from both Powell and Hauff

The recently released So Low,  a compilation of early ‘80s synth, industrial and cold wave classics and undiscovered gems curated by Optimo’s JD Twitch aka Keith McIvor, now has a set of idiosyncratic mixes to complement it.

Powell has contributed a typically atmospheric addition in the form of his take on 49 Second Romance by German minimalists P1/E, while Helena Hauff has added a shadowy bent to Belgian electro-industrial group The Klinik’s Moving Hands.

So Low was released on 19 February via The Vinyl Factory and features lesser-known choices of the scene such as John Bender, Siglo XX, Front 242, Hunting Lodge, and more.

“So Low is an occasional night at The Poetry Club in Glasgow where I play some of the music I played when I first started DJing back in 1987,” McIvor explains of his choice of genre. “At that time the audience I played to mostly loathed what I was playing and rarely danced but then shortly after, when House music arrived I found a different audience who actually liked to dance.

“In response to my wife’s deep love of this music and requests from some friends who were too young to hear it in a club at the time, or indeed were not even born when most of this music was made, I was persuaded to revisit a lot of records I still loved but rarely played out, and So Low was born. It has an extremely enthusiastic audience, a joyous atmosphere and is the antithesis of what a club in Scotland playing this music nearly 30 years ago would have been like.”

Stream Powell’s take on P1/E’s 49 Second Romance below.