In most any Dungeons & Dragons adventure worth completing, the hero must come face-to-face with herself in some form — a cursed, mystical mirror that reveals all that our hero is and is not; a reflection in some Blood River that displays for our hero the monster she has become; a doppelganger that reveals how much our hero has changed since the beginning of the adventure.

So, as XagXaguVar, our year-long 25th anniversary campaign enters its final chapter, Jagjaguwar must also confront our former self. We’re going all the way back to the basement of the sushi joint in Charlottesville; all the way back to when we were just a haphazardly made zine; all the way back to the original mantra which served at Jagjaguwar’s early guiding force. The Sentimental Noise echoing through the caverns of self-discovery is tender and deafening.

We’ve uncovered new and unreleased work from some of Jagjaguwar’s earliest friends like Drunk, Manishevitz and Bevel. We’ve called upon necromancers like Norway’s Jenny Hval, Jagjaguwar legends Wilderness and Bloomington post-rock heroes Tammar. Mysterious noise mongers like Canada’s Wold and Oslo’s Some Nerve have delivered on their promise to absolutely split our skulls open. There are two loving tributes to Patron Saint of Jagjaguwar John Prine. And we’ve unearthed two songs from Atsushi Miura, who once upon a time allowed our founder Darius Van Arman to book shows in the basement of the sushi restaurant he ran. He dedicates one song to Darius and in the other, humorously lambasts the college town he called home for all those years.

And in a concerted effort to make Darius break down in tears of joy and appreciation, we’ve also worked closely with visual artist Nina Hartmann to create a companion book for Sentimental Noise. It’s part non-linear oral history; part poetry journal; part black metal zine; and part Ray Johnson correspondence art. Images, inside jokes and heartfelt love letters pulled from our rich, but far-from-over history. Today Jagjaguwar dies; tomorrow Jagjaguwar is reborn.