Bon Iver – the music de plume for Justin Vernon and his band of merry musical sophisticates – are empowering fans with all of the audio tracks from their critically acclaimed (double) eponymous album, Bon Iver, Bon Iver for a new remix competition.
Designed as a call-to-arms for fans and the remix community, Bon Iver have made the individual audio stems from all ten songs from their second studio album available to download online as part of a project called the Bon Iver, Bon Iver: Stems Project with each song having its own contest where the fans with the best and most imaginative re-imaginings of the originals will take home a cash prize; as well as the glory of all their indie-loving peers.
To participate in the competition, likely remixers need to head to Indaba Music and create a (free) membership for the website in order to download the individual audio packages. Participants then have until Wednesday 29th August to offer up their re-worked track and upload them for consideration, which will then be put to a public vote on Thursday 30th August through Bon Iver and Indaba’s websites and social media.
The winners of the competition will be announced in late September, which each track’s final winning selection to be included on an official Bon Iver, Bon Iver: Stems remix album available exclusively on streaming music service, Spotify. The winners will also get a $US 1,000 cash prize for their musical creation (but presumably, not royalties).
To get potential remixers in the mood, the band’s own drummer/multi-instrumentalist/Jagjaguwar labelmate, S. Carey has already offered up his take on album track, ‘Minnesota, WI’ – which you can listen to below.
As a fan-generated project, it’s a pretty cool move from Bon Iver, and even for those who have no intention of reworking the sophomore release, there’s still the draw card of the audio packages themselves; with some recordings even including previously unreleased parts and sections that were cut from the final album’s mix.
So to recap: register, download stems, nerd out, upload, vote. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to gawk out over the parts for ‘Holocene’ and maybe win ourselves some of that sweet, sweet cash…
You can have a listen to S. Carey’s promotional remix below:
