Music: Optimo and The Black Madonna

JD Twitch and JG Wilkes, the DJs behind internationally-renowned club night Optimo, take the party to Scotland's two major cities for the biggest night of the year tomorrow.

The pair will play both Leith Theatre and SWG3 with The Black Madonna, the Chicago house DJ known for her similarly euphoric, eccentric and playful sets.

Real name Marea Stamper, The Black Madonna was special guest at Optimo's blockbuster 20th birthday party at SWG3 in August 2017.

Twitch and Wilkes generally host their own legendarily good-natured Hogmanay parties at Glasgow's School of Art. During the limbo that followed June's second fire at the Mackintosh building the pair were approached by SWG3 to play their New Year's Eve bash.

“Playing someone else's event takes an enormous amount of work and pressure off us for one year,” says Twitch aka Keith McIvor. “It's nice to let someone else do the hard work and worry about selling the tickets."

It allows McIvor to focus on the launch of new label AF Trax just days after his Hogmanay double shift. A project distinct from McIvor's respected Optimo Music label – which celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2019 – AF Trax's initial release on January 10 will be Rat Full Of Coins, a propulsive EP by Logtoad aka writer, polymath and man-about-town Guy Veale.

"I was blown away by a live set he played and told him he had to somehow turn it into a record,” says McIvor of Veale, a friend since the early 1990s when McIvor was reinventing Edinburgh's club scene with his forward-thinking night Pure.

The new label's second release is Zerma Thursta, a more exotic, sultry effort not unlike some of the records McIvor would play back then.

“It's by two people who would rather remain anonymous,” says McIvor. “They are very politically-minded. They sent it to me and I thought it was perfect for the new label.”

AF stands for "Against Fascism", he explains, and the label's explicit aim is to "make a musical and cultural protest in opposition of rising far right politics and ideology in the world".

Profits will go to Hope Not Hate, the London-based advocacy group which seeks to tackle extremism by grassroots education projects.

After Joe Goddard saw the announcement of AF Trax on social media, the Hot Chip co-founder enlisted legendary New York rapper Kool Keith for vocals on Pull The Plug, the title track of the label's third EP release.

"The response to the label was generally really positive, about 95% said this was a good idea," McIvor says. "There was also a small number saying dance music should not be political, that it should be separate. I respectfully disagree. Dance music has always been about the marginalised and the label is even more relevant now with what's happening in Brazil.”

He adds: “The chances of a small record label being able to do anything are very small, but I'm always of the opinion that it's better to try to do something than nothing.”

Optimo has always attracted a diverse crowd, something McIvor discovered first at Pure.

"Middle class people from Edinburgh were meeting working class people from Fife; for them it was maybe the first time they had encountered LGBT people, or people of colour," he says. "In small towns you might find people who were a bit homophobic or whatever but often it's simple lack of experience. If they met and spoke to each other, they'd find there was nothing to fear.”

“Dancing in clubs has always been good at that, bringing together people who may not otherwise mix."