Dandelions? Oh, well...

• My name is Iordache. I am a jazz and rock saxophone player and composer living in Bucharest, Romania. I have played and recorded with some of Romania's best bands and musicians. Currently I am leading my own jazz funk quartet, Iordache, and I'm playing with indie rock band Kumm. I recorded about 30 albums, including 5 under my own name. This is the 6th.
• I had the idea of this particular project with plants a few years ago, in Germany, while trying to do something interesting with my friend and bassist Utu Pascu, while the van of our rock band Kumm was being repaired.
• In Romania, most city kids have relatives in the countryside, so we both knew how to extract sound from dandelions. (As for playing the leaf, there are bona fide virtuosos of it on the folk music scene here. I don't even come close to these masters.) Utu recorded what we had played then, but the recording was lost.
• Last spring, I noticed the dandelions in full bloom and remembered the whole thing. I set up to record an album of them. At first I thought it would be something to do during the weekend, but I ended up recording and mixing the whole thing for more than a month.
• I decided, from the start, that I wouldn't compose anything beforehand. Each dandelion has its own sound and feel, which depends on its age, whether it grew in the sun or in the shadow, whether it rained in the last few days or not and probably other things I have no idea about. The same goes for the leaves. Since they are very unpredictable (they split and break) after a few attempts to record full tracks I decided I would work like they do in electronic music. That is, I would sample and loop and then record some more, until I felt the song was ready. Every tune  started with an improvised line based on what the plant wanted to sound like, so I might say they did half my job!
• When you pre-order this weirdness, you will have contributed to the first jazz (or jazz related) album recorded with plants. Is it important? Well, I have no clue, so it's up to you to decide. What I do know is only that it was a lot of fun to make, and it opened my own ears to a whole new world of between-the-cracks pitches and melodies I wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

The music has already been recorded - listen! What next?

I recorded the music at my home, so there were no studio costs. I also did some pre-mixing.

• The album was then professionally mixed in a studio, in Bucharest. Cost: $600.
• The cover photography and design were made by Medicine Madison. The inside layout and full graphic design will be also made by her. The cost for everything: $600
• The CD will be a "digifile" - just like a 4-panel Digipak, except for the plastic tray on the right. I found it stupid to make an album glorifying nature, only to have some useless plastic packaging it. It would be with us for the next three hundred years. So it's just good quality cardboard, with gloss UV coating. No plastic except for the CD itself. Production cost: $800 for the first 300 copies.
• The album will be officially released in January or February 2008, with a contemporary dance show created by choreographer Andreea Novac, in Bucharest. Estimated costs for the show and the promotional campaign for the album: $1800.  The show will only happen if I reach my goal, or come fairly close to it. Otherwise, the extra money will be invested in promoting the album.
• The album will be released by my own label, Fiver House Records. If this goes well, I will adopt it as a model for other albums I will release in the future. If the goal is not met, all the digital-related perks will still stand, and a sufficient number of CD's will be made for those who pre-ordered them.

The Impact

• This project will change the way you look at dandelions forever. For those interested, I will post a video on how to make a dandelion into a double reed instrument in seconds, then extract melodies out of it. Thus, everybody will be able to make their own music with dandelions and leaves. There are worse things one can do.
• On the other hand, this will encourage me to keep doing experimental projects.

Risks & Challenges

There are no risks, except for the contemporary dance show - which is very important for me. My campaign runs until December 26. So the only risk, for those of you who don't move fast enough, is to get your CD after Christmas - especially for those outside Romania - shipping time will have to be considered.
But you want it for Christmas, right?

"Sounds fun, but I cannot afford this right now..."

No problem:

• Please share it on your favorite social media, tell your friends who might appreciate weird music, make a paper plane and think about me.