Dream baby dream, forever...

World of Echo has the great honour of presenting the record collection of Keith McIvor, aka JD Twitch, life-long collector and DJ, and one half of the inestimable Optimo (Espacio). Part one of the collection - circa 7-8000 records - will be available to purchase in-store only from 10am on Saturday 14th November, and the shop will be solely dedicated to Keith until Thursday 19th, at which point we will revert back to normal service and the records will remain in our usual second hand section. Part two will follow at some point in early 2027 - details to follow in good time.  

More information on Keith and his life in music can be found below courtesy of his widow, Marissa Costello. 

See you in the racks. >>>

Keith McIvor, better known as JD Twitch and one half of Optimo (Espacio), spent his life collecting records.

The collection began when Keith was still a child growing up in Balerno, outside Edinburgh, and grew with him throughout his life. When his grandfather died, a young Keith spent all the money he inherited on records — much to the disapproval of his dad, who thought it was terribly wasteful. Neither of them could have known then that those records, and the curiosity that drove him to buy them, would become an important investment in a remarkable life and career in music. Some were carefully protected in sleeves and meticulously looked after; others bear the scars of years spent being pulled in and out of DJ bags and played in booths around the world. They were a working collection and were very much lived with. The World of Echo team now has the mammoth task — one I certainly don't envy! — of cleaning, sorting and working their way through thousands of records before they find their way into other people's collections.

Keith never stopped digging. His knowledge and curiosity stretched across a mind-boggling range of genres, countries and eras, and he was as excited about discovering something obscure that nobody had heard before as he was about a record he had loved for decades. Almost every trip he made anywhere in the world involved seeking out local record shops and coming home with more records. His collection wasn't simply an archive or a DJ's working library; it was the physical record of a lifetime spent listening, searching, learning, sharing and connecting people through music.

Following Keith's death in September 2025 from a brain tumour, Jonnie and I spent a great deal of time considering what should happen to his vast collection. We know that people will have different opinions about what we should have done with it, but Keith believed records are ultimately there to be played, discovered and loved. We wanted his records to find their way into other people's collections, to be played and enjoyed rather than simply kept because they once belonged to him.

It was particularly important to us that the collection went to an independent record shop. Keith was a passionate supporter of independent record stores throughout his life, not only visiting them wherever he travelled but making a point of buying directly from shops, labels and artists whenever he could.

We are therefore delighted that Stephen, Natalie and the team at World of Echo have purchased Keith's collection and will be sharing it with the same love, knowledge and care with which Keith collected it. Each record from the collection will carry a “World of JD Twitch” sticker, so wherever individual records eventually travel, there will be a small reminder of the collection they once belonged to and the person who chose them.

There is also something beautifully fitting about the collection finding a home at World of Echo. The shop's name comes from World of Echo by Arthur Russell, an artist Keith adored and whose music reflected so much of what Keith valued: curiosity, experimentation, tenderness and a refusal to be constrained by genre.

Keith's collection could never remain intact forever in quite the way it existed around him. For us, allowing these records to go back out into the world — to DJs, collectors and music lovers, where they can be played, discovered, shared and loved all over again — feels much more like Keith than allowing them to sit untouched in an archive, which was never what he was about.  

Perhaps the best way to sum it all up is simply: Keep it Keith. Connect with your community, support those who need it, be kind, support your local record shop, support outsider artists, and keep it weird.

We hope the World of JD Twitch collection will allow a little part of that philosophy, and Keith's extraordinary lifelong love of music, to keep being heard, shared and loved, from one sound system to another.

Keith died from glioblastoma, an aggressive and currently incurable brain tumour. In his memory, we have established the Keith McIvor Glioblastoma Research Fund, which will support research into glioblastoma in Scotland. If you are able to, we would be incredibly grateful for any donation, however small, to help fund research and improve outcomes for people diagnosed with this devastating disease.

A limited number of Keith McIvor/JD Twitch memorial fanzines, created by friends and family to celebrate Keith's life, music and community, will also be available in person from World of Echo. The fanzines aren't being sold commercially; they are available in return for a donation to Keith's research fund. It feels particularly fitting that something made in Keith's memory can help raise money for brain tumour research while also bringing people through the doors of the independent record shops he believed so strongly in supporting.

Donate to the Keith McIvor Glioblastoma Research Fund. - Marissa Costello