Jamie Peck, Guest Curator

As you’ve probably figured out by now, Halloween is canceled this year, preempted by the all-too-real horrors of a global pandemic. While this is hardly the greatest tragedy of the past few months, or even the past few minutes, we are still allowed to be sad about it, given that it’s the Christmas of Gothic-American culture. But just because we can’t dress up like famous serial killers or characters from Twin Peaks and get weird at some labyrinthine party with our nearest and dearest doesn’t mean we can’t make it special in some severely limited but better-than-nothing way. Like listening to this mix while doing something witchy with a socially responsible number of friends.

While nightlife has become less of a priority for me as my brain has become increasingly broken by politics and my focus has shifted from hellish music to our descent into actual hell, I still managed to throw a yearly Halloween party right up until the end of the before times, and even if the last one had fewer naked people in gimp masks at it than the first one, I’m glad I kept up the tradition. (I am just now realizing, with no small amount of holy-shit-I’m-old, that I did this for ten years.) I also still managed to DJ here and there, if only to force myself to turn off the podcasts and remember that I like music, people, blood-colored lipstick, and getting out of the house. See, kids? Your mom was cool once!

When putting this mix together, I thought back on all the dark dance parties I’ve had the honor of throwing, DJing or attending. Some of the tracks are from artists I’ve been lucky enough to book; Tempers, Bootblacks, Azar Swan, Pawns, Xeno and Oaklander, Pop 1280, and Light Asylum, to be precise. Others are tracks I liked to venture out from behind the DJ booth and do a spidery Elaine dance to. The last track is one of the ones I used to play at the end of the night when I wanted everybody to leave, but this would usually just prompt some guy to come up and give me a pat on the head for knowing about Wolf Eyes or Swans or whoever. That I am even somewhat nostalgic for him is a sign of how much I miss all of it.

— Jamie Peck, host of The Antifada and contributor to The Majority Report with Sam Seder