Blanks NYC is an art collective of sorts, a bunch of friends who are artists, animators, designers etc that host parties throughout New York City. They invited me to take part in Blanksgiving 2.0, their first anniversary party, in which they invited a ton of people to make mix CDs and come DJ. The idea was to make 20+ copies and bring them to the party, where they’d be collected in batches so everyone would leave with a stack of mixes. We would also all DJ. Being 5-10+ years older than most of the people involved I was given one of the prime DJ slots. I have to say if I had to choose between working a party from 10pm till 4am, or just going on at 11:30 on a thursday night, killing it for a half-hour, then going home at a reasonable hour, in my advanced age the latter is sounding really great.

I was excited about the mix idea as it’s been a few years since I’ve recorded any kind of proper mix. As a “DJ” I should be recording mixes every day but I’m really lazy. I have a couple ideas for mixes that I’ve been planning for years but never getting around to doing, and in the last year or so that I’ve gotten my little letterpress studio set-up, the idea of recording good mixes and printing neat covers has been an obvious goal, just one I keep putting off. So this party at least gave me the push I needed to do such things. Sure, I waited till the day before. Woke up, recorded the mix, went to the dentist for a few painful hours, came home, edited the mix, set some type, printed the black, cleaned the press, set some more type, printed the red, cleaned the press, burned 20 copies, and off to bed at a totally unreasonable hour. Note to amateur printers–remember to print black last so you don’t have to be so anal cleaning the lighter ink off the press.

So I consider this a dry run. The mix is kinda sloppy, drags here and there, filled with forced transitions. I thought it was going to be more poppy, but some of the transitions were so off I just edited entire songs out. But there’s some pretty cool stuff, some kind of weird stuff. Certainly not the most fun, dancey or poppy mix I’ve ever recorded, but it has it’s charms. The cover was done quickly with some hand-set type on some leftover stock pulled from the recylcling bin, using way more impression then is healthy.

Dan Selzer – Blanks NYC Mix
[audio:http://danselzer.com/sounds/danselzer_blanksnyc.mp3]
control-click/right-click to download

Download hi-res cover art here.

Tracklist:
Ultramarine – Stella
Housemaids – Je T’aime
Long Ago – A Relic
Eric Random and the Bedlamites – Hardcore
The Naughtiest Girl Was a Monitor – To Love Nuclear
The Associates – The Associate
Stephen Mallinder – Cool Down
Psychic TV – She Was Surprised
The Dragees – Shoot To Kill
Simple Minds – New Gold Dream (Bottin Remix)
Repetition – A Full Rotation
Japan – Life in Tokyo
Up! – Spiritual High
The Associates – Theme from Perhaps
Les Rita Mitsouko – Marcia Baila
Durutti Column – The Together Mix
Sweet Exorcist – Track Jack
400 Blows – Men of Divine Wind (The Kamikaze)
Renegade Soundwave – Pocket Porn Dub