Lots of musicians pay with 8-bit music composition programs, reworking pop favorites to sound like they were generated by old video game systems. But few have tried their hand at chiptune jazz, a deficiency that Andy Baio of Waxy.org sought to address with Kind of Bloop, released today:
… 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.”
Visit the web site and check out the samples of each reworked classic. I dropped the five bucks for the complete release. It will never replace the original, but Bloop‘s contributors do an excellent job of maintaining the spirit of the half-century-old original.