Bloomington-based Secretly Group to release special edition albums as part of June 5 recycled vinyl campaign

Beginning next Friday (June 5), local vinyl junkies will have a little something extra to celebrate. Timed to coincide with World Environment Day, several record labels will officially release special edition albums pressed on 100% reclaimed vinyl.

Bloomington’s Landlocked Music, along with record stores throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, will participate in the inaugural event.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Bloomington-based Secretly Group—home to the Secretly Canadian, Jagjaguwar, and Dead Oceans labels among others—is one industry player behind this going-greener initiative. “Five years ago or so, we started in earnest our sustainability committee here, where we started to track our [carbon] emissions,” says Ben Swanson, Secretly Group co-founder and COO. “We quickly determined that our biggest carbon footprint was coming from our manufacturing. So, it’s something that we started to dig into.”

As part owner of Independent Record Pressing, a vinyl plant in Bordentown, New Jersey, Secretly Group was well positioned to explore alternative manufacturing processes. “We started to experiment with post-industrial and pre-consumer, recycled vinyl,” Swanson says. “Basically overstock vinyl that’s been sitting on the shelves for years—most distributors and labels have a destruction plan. It’s just dead stock. Rather than landfilling that, you know, could we ship it to one of our plants … and regrind it and turn it into new vinyl?”

After some fine-tuning, they were able to successfully press new albums on the reclaimed vinyl material. “Because it’s recycled, you can’t really control the color of it,” Swanson notes. “You’re getting it from all different colors.”

With that in mind, buyers shouldn’t expect to see the classic black vinyl they’re used to. In fact, Swanson adds, “If you buy virgin PVC, it isn’t naturally black. They actually dye it black. … The reason they do that is, historically, it was made out of lacquer, and the lacquer was black.”

What Swanson calls “revinyl” may look a little unusual, but there’s no difference in sound quality. “If you can pivot people’s expectations that [vinyl] doesn’t necessarily have to be black and they can default to revinyl, it would ostensibly save 16% on all that [virgin] vinyl being pressed,” he says. “The reality is there isn’t enough pre-consumer feedstock to handle 100% of the pressings out there, but there’s a lot of dead vinyl on distributor shelves. And if you can use that up, that’s great.”

Besides Secretly Group, other partners in the June 5 event include Exceleration Music, Warp Records, Beggars Group, and Ninja Tune along with Music Declares Emergency and The Music Climate Pact. As for the special edition albums? They include revinyl re-releases of Bon Iver’s “For Emma, Forever Ago”; Dinosaur Jr.’s “You’re Living All Over Me”; Elliott Smith’s “Roman Candle”; Bonobo’s “Black Sands”; Chuck Prophet’s “Wake The Dead”; Jeff Austin’s “The Simple Truth”; Black Country, New Road’s “Forever Howlong”; Hella’s “Hold Your Horse Is”; Tubeway Army’s eponymous album, and Warp Records’ various compilation, “Artificial Intelligence.”

The records chosen for revinyl release are in-demand titles which their corresponding labels routinely re-press and sell. “These are records that we’d be making anyway,” Swanson says.

“With a lot of greenwashing out there, there’s really good reason for people to be cynical,” he continues. “Our stance on it is we don’t want the perfect to be the enemy of the good and we try to be very thoughtful about it.”

While re-pressing these albums sans virgin vinyl won’t single-handedly save the world, the resulting 16% increase in efficiency is a step in the right direction. “Regardless of what color and what format they’re on, we’re just trying to make them more sustainable than they would be otherwise,” Swanson says.

Secretly Group 30th anniversary: 3-day concert in August

The June 5 special edition album releases arrive as Secretly Group marks the 30th year since its founding.

The label family plans to celebrate with “What Comes After the Blues: Secretly 30,” a three-day concert series which will be held on August 27, 28, and 29 at the Bluebird, the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, and Switchyard Park, respectively.

“The 27th will be June Panic which is the first artist we ever put out,” says Ben Swanson, Secretly Group co-founder and COO. “We haven’t worked with him in many years, but he’s coming to play a show with Early Day Miners and Magnolia Electric Co.”

On Friday, August 28th, one of Secretly Canadian’s newest artists, Jordan Patterson, will perform along with Kevin Morby and Sharon Van Etten. “[Morby and Van Etten] are two of our current artists and some of our bigger artists,” he says.

And on Saturday, August 29th, Angela Autumn, Jensen McRae, and Durand Jones & The Indications will perform in collaboration with the Granfalloon Concert Series. “The Granfalloon changed their format this year,” Swanson explains. In lieu of one big show on Kirkwood Avenue, Granfalloon will include a series of three summer concerts.

“They’re trying to make Granfalloon a little bit more sustainable, as well as invest in the infrastructure at Switchard Park amphitheater, so that more people can do shows there and whatnot,” Swanson says. “It’s a win-win for the community.”

For ticket information, visit the Buskirk-Chumley Theater at 114 E. Kirkwood Avenue or online at buskirkchumley.org.