Kind of Bloop

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, aka every non-jazz listener‘s favorite jazz record. You’ll see a lot of excellent essays this week about the impact of Blue and what it has meant to jazz and culture at large since. What you won’t see are many attempts to place the record in a contemporary context or to understand what the album and our current music culture have to do with each other, if anything at all.

While it is a very specific take, I’d like to offer up Andy Baio’s Kind of Bloop 8-bit Miles Davis tribute album that was released today as, at the very least, a unique response to today’s anniversary. Using Kickstarter, Andy raised enough money to commission completely legal covers of Kind of Blue by five prominent 8-bit artists: Ast0r, Virt, Sergeeo, Shnabula and Disasterpeace. (I know that sounded like the most made-up list of words ever, but this is real, promise.)

The results are pretty magnificent, I must say. The album is currently available only to folks who supported the original project ($5 for the download, MP3 or FLAC, and $30 for a limited-edition CD)(vinyl may come later), but it will go on sale to the general public this Thursday at 3pm EST. At the album’s homepage, you can listen to extended samples of all five recordings — they are pretty spectacular.

The really interesting bits (ha!) come with the purposeful degradation and simplification of the original recordings, which are obviously quite ornate and intricate. It’s not that the 8-bit arrangements are simplified, it’s that the creators of these new versions had to find a balance between getting the basic note structures of the original correct and also finding the real essence of the original recordings. And on that front, the record is definitely a success.

As for Kind of Blue itself, it’s all a bit daunting, isn’t it? I’m reminded of a part in Don Delillo’s novel White Noise where the protagonist observes a group of people taking pictures of a barn with a huge sign next to it reading: “The Most Photographed Barn in America.” As one character remarks to the other, the people aren’t taking pictures of a barn, they’re taking pictures of taking pictures of a barn, an unknowing self-referencing act. In its status as an icon of icons and a classic for all ages, Kind of Blue has a bit of that status. Which is all the more reason to rejoice when someone deigns to approach it in a new light.