You wait around for ages for a label to have a significant birthday and then two show up at once. Jagjaguwar, part of Secretly Group, is turning 25 while Impulse! Records is 60 this year. Both labels are, in their own way, marking these milestones.
We will start with the youngest first. Jagjaguwar is celebrating its first quarter century with Jag Quarterly, a “four-part project [that] will deliver collections of music, creative endeavors and partnerships that span physical mediums, born through brand new collaborations from artists within and outside of the Jagjaguwar family”.
The concept is that each edition of Jag Quarterly will take “a different mantra from the label’s past, and imbue it with new meaning”. The first Jag Quarterly (with the mantra of Dilate Your Heart) is released on 26th March digitally and 9th April physically. It includes a spoken-word album by Ross Gay that is expanded to include previously unreleased compositions from Bon Iver, Mary Lattimore, Angel Bat Dawid, Gia Margaret and Sam Gendel. It is the label’s first spoken-word album in 20 years.
There are different packages on offer, with coloured vinyl editions and records bundled with exclusive T-shirts or exclusive prints. The D2C store is offering a mega-bundle of all four Jag Quarterly releases for £199.99. Tracks from acts like Sharon Van Etten, Moses Sumney, Lonnie Holley and Perfume Genius are promised on future releases.
Meanwhile, jazz label Impulse! Records is taking the approach of mixing its deep archives with its frontline artists. As with Jagjaguwar, things are being rolled out throughout 2021 across a variety of releases. These include the Impulse! Records: Music, Message & The Moment boxset, an Acoustic Sounds series (with recordings from Ray Charles, Gil Evans, Charles Mingus and others) and a relaunched webstore offering limited-edition merchandise.
Most significant is the launch of the Deep-Dive video series on YouTube where a classic album from the label’s archives is focused in on, with John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme being the first one under the microscope.
With both labels, reverence for their past sits neatly alongside excitement for their future.
