We’ve already received over $5,000 in pledges to help make this project possible! Thanks to everyone for their support.
An Excerpt from Project Creator Andy Baio:
What would the pioneers of jazz sound like on a Nintendo Entertainment System? Coltrane on a C-64? Mingus on Amiga? For years, I’ve wondered what “chiptune jazz” would sound like, but there are only a tiny handful of jazz covers ever made.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” &mdash I’ve asked five brilliant chiptune musicians to collaborate and reinvent the entire album in the 8-bit sound.
The lineup, in alphabetical order:
Ast0r (Chris J. Hampton)
Disasterpeace (Rich Vreeland)
Sergeeo (Sergio de Prado)
Shnabubula (Samuel Ascher-Weiss)
Virt (Jake Kaufman)
To create this album, I hope to raise $2,000 to pay royalties, pay the artists, and print CDs. Legally releasing cover songs requires paying mechanical licenses to the song publishers through the Harry Fox Agency, totaling about $420 for every 250 downloads and a $75 processing fee. I’ll be using the remainder to print a very limited run of CDs for Kickstarter backers, and split the rest evenly among the five musicians for their painstaking work. (This is a labor of love for me, so I won’t be keeping a dime.)
I hope to have the entire album download ready for Kind of Blue’s 50th birthday on August 17. (Printing and shipping CDs will take longer.)
All project backers will get exclusive first access to the album download before anyone else in the world, and exclusive updates during the album’s creation. Backers donating $30 or more will receive an extremely limited-edition CD, printed only for this Kickstarter project. Once the August 1 deadline is reached, the CD will never be sold again!
Track Listing (Tentative):
1. So What – Ast0r
2. Freddie Freeloader – Virt
3. Blue in Green – Sergeeo
4. All Blues – Shnabubula
5. Flamenco Sketches – Disasterpeace
(“Kind of Bloop” pixel art by SnackAdmiral.)
