wax&wires

Kind Of Bloop: An 8-Bit Tribute To Miles Davis

Andy Baio is working on a really cool idea: to recreate Miles Davis’ classic album, Kind of Blue, with chip sounds. He’s currently working on raising funds for it, so that licensing can be paid to release the album for sale.

I just launched a project I’ve been dreaming about for years. The idea is Kind of Bloop, an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, one of my favorite albums of all-time. I’ve always wondered what chiptune jazz covers would sound like. What would the jazz masters sound like on a Nintendo Entertainment System? Coltrane on a C-64? Mingus on Amiga?

I’ve researched the topic quite a bit, and was only able to find four jazz covers ever released — ast0r’s version of Coltrane’s Giant Steps and Charlie Parker’s Confirmation, Sergeeo’s own Giant Steps cover, and Bun’s version of Coltrane’s My Favorite Things. (If you know more, please let me know!)

So I asked ast0r and sergeeo, along with three incredible chiptune artists (Virt, Shnabubula, and Disasterpeace), to collaborate on a track-by-track remake of the album. I’m raising the money to legally release the album, pay the royalties¹, print a very limited run of CDs for Kickstarter backers only, and pay the artists for their hard work on these very challenging songs.

The goal is to have the album done and ready for download on Kind of Blue’s 50th birthday, August 17th. I’ll try to keep you posted on any developments. Some other 8-bit jazz has come off sounding really cool, albeit quirky; so this album will definitely have my attention when it drops.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 12:16 pm. It is filed under wires and tagged with 8-bit, bit crush, collaboration, covers, electronic, lo-fi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.