Astralwerks teams up with Blue Note Jazz to present Bluewerks

In a meeting of veteran bodies with refreshingly young minds, global dance music imprint Astralwerks has partnered up with jazz purveyors Blue Note Records to create ‘Bluewerks’.

The first compilation dropped at the end of February featuring cover art that plays off both labels, and each track has its own visualiser video that’s animated with the cover elements.

The first release is a compilation ‘Bluewerks Vol.1: Up Down Left Right’, and each track has its own fully animated visualizer that plays off the cover and label artwork.

Although established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis that focused on American jazz, the label shifted its attention to modern jazz with a wider appeal by 1947. This 2021 reincarnation through a sibling label comes as a mild surprise given the 70-plus-years of archiving the deeply rooted genre.

The new collaborative label concept meets somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between jazz and dance music aimed at the charts, of course — lo-fi beats and downtempo aesthetics will be the focus of substance. The music style that was ushered in via hip hop and downtempo for it’s imperfected and grainy texture turned into a millennial trend for it’s effective accompaniment to studying and chilling at home. In terms of timing, the entry of Bluewerks to be an authority behind the genre couldn’t be more apt when taking into account the social and domestic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how medicating the music style can be.

With an aim to release an EP every quarter with a fresh theme and mood, we can expect some mellow but adventurous forays into the grassroots environment that the lo-fi audience yearns for.