“What is Bonk Wave? What is not Bonk Wave? What does Bonk Wave mean to you? Does it matter?”
On July 31st, 2023, Yoni Den launched an open call for submissions for Not What I Call Bonk Wave Volume 001, a “proposed compilation of music that may or may not be Bonk Wave”.
Beginnings
Just ten days earlier, the term Bonk Wave had been born out of frustration with the Genre Police, a bunch of online folks who ‘gatekeep’ certain genres of electronic music to within tiny niches that seemingly only they could tell apart. “That’s Not Bonk Wave!” they would say.
Within hours of that initial post, the first #BonkWave track had been imagined by Flear and posted to Mastodon.
It could have just been left there, and ended as a short-lived joke. But no…
Volume 001
Striking while the iron was still hot, the call for submissions went out on both the Fediverse and on some external music forums, with a deadline just 14 days away – August 13th, 2023.
Amazingly 14 tracks were created and submitted in that short time, and on the 25th August the collection was released on Bandcamp, with a “Pay What You Want” price tag. The music was an eclectic mix of electronic styles, as that was the circle Yoni Den moved in at the time. Was any of it Bonk Wave? Who knew – the compilation itself was confusingly titled “Not What I Call Bonk Wave” implying that the critics didn’t think so.
Several of the tracks made reference to the gatekeeping aspect of the original post – including Flear’s “Genre Police” and my own Key 13 track “Heretic”.
The cover art was a reference to cheap compilation albums of the past, with a few easter eggs for those who knew what to look for.
Yoni Den handled all aspects of the release – compiling the tracks, designing and drawing the artwork, writing the humorous track notes and uploading the music to Bandcamp under the guise of a fictional record label called Bonk Knob Records. (“It was right there!” said Yoni Den).
The album was an immediate success amongst the Ravenation electronic music community, and soon people were looking at that “Volume 001” part and asking “So, when’s Volume 002? Can I contribute?!”
Volume 002
So, just a few weeks later, a second call for submissions went out – on October 15th, 2023. Not What I Call Bonk Wave Volume 002 : Bonkwave Nights – A compilation of Electronic Music which is or is not #BonkWave
only this time it’s night time
This time there was a longer deadline – submissions closed on the 15th of November, and Yoni Den was inundated – far more tracks than expected! A wider range of musicians had caught on, and although still mostly electronic in nature, the styles varied considerably across the two discs.
There were so many submissions (29 in total) that the album had to be split across two “discs” – A and B – and was released to Bandcamp on the 8th December, 2023. The cover art featured, for the first time, the character known as Bonk Wave Pig, with a natty purple suit and tie, and a mohican-style fuzz of pink hair, along with the now-characteristic neon teal-and-pink Bonk Wave lettering.
Again, Yoni Den handled everything – artwork, track notes, compiling and sequencing, releasing to Bandcamp, the lot.
Both compilations got some attention on the ‘Gimmie That Beat’ website – Volume 002 was top of their December charts, and two of the discs made their top ten for 2023.
BonkWave AllStars and Bonksmas
With the momentum still high from the Volume 002 release, AxWax put out a call for collaborators on a Christmas single.
Within just a few days, on December the 22nd 2023, We Wish You A Merry Bonksmas arrived, under the new “BonkWave AllStars” banner. This release featured a host of musicians, many of whom had not contributed to either of the previous compilations, and ensured the year ended on a high point.
Passing the torch
The work to put the Volume 002 release out, and perhaps the resulting attention on Mastodon, had taken its toll, and on the 4th Jan 2024, Yoni Den, uncomfortable with the responsibility of what had now become quite a big thing, reached out to resign the unofficial post of ‘CEO’ for Bonk Knob Records.
The intention was that the Bonk Wave movement should continue – “We did something really great, and I hope it is just the beginning” – but it would need new hands to take it forward.
Luckily AxWax stepped up to pick up the reins in the short term, with the understanding that the ‘CEO’ role would likely rotate, and control shouldn’t ever be concentrated in one person.
Waves of Bonk
Conscious that Mastodon wasn’t proving the easiest way to coordinate releases, and also that several contributors to the first two volumes weren’t even on the Fediverse, we discussed moving to a different platform.
The first step was to try a Matrix room, and so AxWax set up Waves of Bonk, on Jan 10th 2024. This started off really well, with some lively discussions, but we failed to get some of the contributors to join, especially those outside the Fediverse. Matrix is also a bit.. quirky.. and some folks struggled a bit with the client software.
It did form the spark for a few new ideas, however – discussions included the concept of a new remix album, based on tracks from the first 2 compilations. We also discussed the image2midi software that Yonder created, and I subsequently turned into a webapp for easier use. At one point there was even talk of a compilation of these – but that didn’t happen.
bonkwave.org
Deeper discussion was held around the future of any Bonk Wave infrastructure or community – should we set up an alternative to Bandcamp? – several of us had recently set up Faircamp sites so that looked like a good idea. If we did set something up, it should be robust, without reliance on one person. We also discussed the fact we were seen as an electronic music community, which perhaps wasn’t exactly the case, and might be excluding some folks.
What evolved eventually was the idea of an old school forum for discussion purposes, and a Faircamp site under the same banner for current and future releases. Across late January 2024 I set up the bonkwave.org domain, and AxWax configured a Simple Machines Forum to run on it, which I installed into some web hosting space I already had, and wasn’t using for much. This was the start of The BonkBoard, which launched for real on the 3rd of February, 2024.
Licensing
When it came to the Faircamp site we hit a bit of an issue – it wasn’t clear what licences the original compilations had been released under – artists had given their tracks freely under the assumption it would be on Bandcamp. Could we just copy everything to our own Faircamp?
We decided to reach out and get explicit permission from all the artists, which still remains an issue to this day. We got rapid responses with full permission from (nearly) all the Fediverse artists but many of the non-Fedi artists just didn’t reply to the emails, which is such a shame. We’ve left their tracks off the Faircamp site for now – you can still get them for free on Bandcamp. If any of you ever read this – please let us know if you’re OK duplicating your tracks!
I still don’t know if we made the right decision or not – but it feels better not to re-use material without clear permission. For each subsequent release we’ve established clear licensing per track, and the submission statement from Volume 003 onwards allows “Bonk Knob Records” a limited, non-exclusive distribution right so we can, in future, move to new hosting services as required.
Be My BonkWave
Somewhere in the middle of all this activity, AxWax found the time to coordinate a second collaborative release as BonkWave AllStars – and Be My BonkWave became the first new release on the shiny new Faircamp site, just in time for Valentine’s Day 2024.
Meanwhile, the BonkBoard forum was getting a few new joiners, but we hadn’t (and have still not) attracted anyone outside the Fediverse. Discussion was slow.
Remixes
Somewhere on the Matrix chat we’d started discussing a remix album. It turns out that, back in February, Ordos Mk.0 and Socool had already remixed each other’s tracks from the Volume 002 compilation, and were ready to go.
On March 8th, 2024, Ordos Mk.0 put out a call for submissions for the remix compilation on the BonkBoard. The tentative release date was set for April 26th, to give everyone time to finish.
We didn’t know it at the time, but the creative process for this release would start to point the way forward to the future. Over the next few weeks, several people contributed. The cover art was started by DockBunson and finished by Ordos Mk.0. The decision was taken to master all the tracks together, and Socool stepped up to the plate to do that. Track notes and sequencing was done as a joint exercise on a Google spreadsheet set up by n3wjack. We decided to remix the original compilation title as well, and came up with Not Bonk What I Call Wave: Remixes – with the cover art cleverly arranged so you could still read it as “Not What I Call Bonk Wave”.
A few artists were struggling to find time to finish their remixes so by the 10th May 2024 we decided to release what we had, 9 awesome tracks. The other remixes did come through a few weeks later, and we re-launched the album on the 21st of June, with the new material taking it up to 13 tracks. Mastering the tracks together made this the most polished release to date.
For the first time, AxWax suggested a live launch party using Radio Free Fedi’s owncast server. which was hugely successful – everyone had a great time, and it really brought the community together.
Progress? or not?
Unlike the previous compilations, which had been Yoni Den alone, suddenly we had a team of people working together on their own initiative, spreading the workload. To me, at least, this really felt like a big step forwards. But I was conscious we’d had a submission period open for three months, and only had 13 tracks, which wasn’t a lot compared to the previous compilation with a far shorter submission deadline.
Was the bonk flame flickering a little?
An anniversary
As July 2024 came round, I was aware we’d be heading for the first year anniversary of Yoni Den’s original Bonk Wave post. It felt like we should do something to commemorate this – so I set up a call for a secret collaboration on Mastodon, on July 3rd, using the BonkWave AllStars banner again. I checked, and double checked, the date on Yoni Den’s post – 22nd July 2023, and set aim to release on that day.
I got more contributions than I could handle and the resulting patchwork of production ended up as Happy Bonk Day, featuring a fabulous lineup of musicians. This was very different from anything we’d done before, as it skewed more towards rock than electronica. The release was completed by alternative versions from sknob and AxWax
We had everything ready to go for the 22nd, then, on the 21st, 55aw suddenly announced the anniversary! I was stunned. The original post had been past midnight in my local timezone (UK), so was technically showing as the 22nd to me, but in US timezones was on the 21st.
So I hurriedly rushed out the release on the 21st, amending the cover art appropriately.
Unbonked?
While putting together Happy Bonk Day, we’d already been discussing what to do about another compilation. AxWax wanted to attract more musicians outside the electronic genre, so we came up with the idea of a 2-disc compilation Bonked and Unbonked where, we assumed, acoustic musicians would feel more comfortable on the Unbonked disc.
The release of the single was a good time to put out the submission call, so on July 23rd 2024 I put a post up on the BonkBoard, and a link on Mastodon.
Remembering that we’d allowed nearly 3 months for the Remixes album, and only had 13 submissions, I wasn’t expecting much. We set the submission deadline for 2 months time – 25th September – just to make sure we had enough submissions for at least one disc.
I may have been a tad pessimistic. The eventual Volume 003 release had 48 tracks, spanning 3 discs! You can read all about how it was put together here. We split the release across 4 weeks, with Disc A on 25th October, Disc B on the 8th of November, and Disc C on the 22nd of November 2024.
Suddenly the future seems pretty Bonky!
Bonk Wave was, is, and will always be
Getting a bit more philosophical as 2024 comes to an end.
The Volume 003 release has shown that we’ve come together as an awesome, supportive, creative community of artists. It was still a lot of hard work to get Volume 003 over the line, but the lessons learned will make the next one easier – and there will be a next one. There’s already discussion about a second remix album happening now – it’s currently visible to contributors only – but give us a shout on the BonkBoard if you want to take part. The call for Volume 004 won’t be too far into 2025.
As we grow, we’re going to need to get a little more formal about some things – perhaps developing a written Code of Conduct for the forum that everyone can agree on, solidifying/clarifying/standardising the submission guidelines and expanding the moderation team. Hopefully we can do this without changing the way everything works now – robust conversations and strong opinions are the nature of the beast, but we can still keep it civil.
I also want to be clear, we still don’t know what is, or is not, Bonk Wave. And there’s a few things that are implied by that.
- If we don’t know what Bonk Wave is, we can’t own it, or copyright it.
- We do own, collectively, this pseudo-record-label called Bonk Knob Records, and we have a great community around the bonkwave.org website, but none of this implies ownership of Bonk Wave.
- We should never forget where this comes from. How can any of us say, with a straight face, “That’s Not Bonk Wave!” to someone else, when there’s no clear definition of what it is?
- There have been, and will be, people who use the term outside of our core group. Maybe even to make money out of it. We can’t stop them. Should we even try? It doesn’t feel right, unless they’re actively trying to disrupt what we’re doing.
- There’s probably little point in getting angry at people trying to rip off the idea, as there’s very little we can do about it. If we keep doing what we do, and do it well, they will all fade away. Or join us!
- And we will still reap the same benefits we do now – which is, no money, but a great sense of belonging!
Onashe
Namayo
Nideno
Waboki
In the end, we’re all just Bonk Dust.
source:Key 13