Kind of Bloop: Crowdsourcing an Album
Six months ago I donated $40 to the manufacturing of an album. Along with 410 other contributors of the Kickstarter community, we managed to raise $8,648 towards the recording of Kind of Bloop, an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, considered to be the greatest jazz album of all time and currently celebrating its 50th anniversary.
For those not in the know, 8-bit music is music generated using older computer and video game consoles of the 8-bit generation: Commodore 64, NES, Sega Master System, Atari-ST, Nintendo Gameboy, etc. Sometimes original hardware is used, sometimes emulated hardware, and other times just the chip that was needed to make sound is used.
Eight bit music started off as a form of nostalgia, either downloading old tracks or listening to radio stations such as Slay Radio which gave old gamers the opportunity to enjoy to the video game music of their youth. With time remixes of these songs became popular in the dance, techno and electronic music communities. Most 8-bit fans fall in love with the idiosyncratic nature of the music, and now you can easily find covers of contemporary songs, such as Weezer – The 8 Bit Album.
“So Chris, what are you listening to these days?”
“Crowdsourced jazz tribute albums recorded on Nintendo, Sega and Commodore 64.”
What’s interesting about this particular project is that it was commissioned by Andy Baio, bringing together the talent of several 8-bit musicians, each one working on a separate track over a four month period in order to produce the tribute album. Andy was looking to raise $2,000 in order to give a small stipend to each artist and produce physical copies of the disc, and cover the necessary royalties (yes, this is completely legit). Amazingly, interest in the project was so strong the necessary funds were raised in the first day, and before the deadline had been exceeded by 430%.
So how does Kind of Bloop sound? Well you can listen to it yourself, but my own take is that most of the tracks come off really well. I think a lot of love and consideration has gone into the composition of each one, especially All Blues by Shnabubula, which respects the tradition while containing some amazing improvisational free-form sections that any jazz musician can appreciate, even Miles himself.
“Those songs to me don’t exist, you know? “So What” or Kind of Blue, I’m not going to play that shit, those things are there. They were done in that era, the right hour, the right day, and it happened. It’s over; it’s on the record.” – Miles Davis