Dirtywave have shipped plenty of M8's in the last year. They just produce them in batches, there have also been shortages of the Teensy 4.1 microcontroller used IIRC and they are highly sought after. You can also "build your own" from supplied firmware https://github.com/Dirtywave/M8HeadlessFirmware
This is not the fly-by-night kickstarter you are implying.
You might be interested in the Dirtywave M8. If you don’t want to buy or wait for the actual hardware, you are able to install the software yourself and run it in headless mode.
https://github.com/Dirtywave/M8HeadlessFirmware
You might also look at Pure Data and Max.
https://cycling74.com/products/max
In terms of actually making music, I think that probably just comes with both practice and experimentation.
addendum: You can run this M8 Tracker as a "headless" version with a Teensy 4.1 on your computer. https://github.com/Dirtywave/M8HeadlessFirmware
(might be a good option for tracker fans since this hardware is really "hard to get" at the moment.) M8 Tracker seems like a perfect device. In the meantime, you can try the above DIY version and practice with that.