AUSTIN, Texas – Crazy music experiments should always be encouraged. But that doesn't mean they're always great – or easy to pull off.
[bug id="sxsw2012"]They can, however, be fun to watch. In new documentary Re:Generation, the filmmakers follow five DJs as they try to make music with artists and music completely outside their genres. Dubstep don Skrillex goes into the studio with the remaining members of The Doors, Mark Ronson (above) makes jazz in New Orleans with Trombone Shorty and Erykah Badu, the Crystal Method cut a track about Detroit with Martha Reeves, and so on.
The studio sessions (and the results) are a mixed bag – Reeves doesn't like all the lyrics written by Crystal Method, Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger look at Skrilly like he's an alien for a while before realizing he actually understands music – but the work of DJ Premier moves the project as close to transcendent as it gets.
Premo, one half seminal duo Gang Starr and generally considered one of the best hip-hop DJs and producers ever, was tasked with creating something using classical music. Being a DJ that doesn't play much beyond the turntables – as opposed to, say, Ronson and Skrillex, who play quite a few each – he stuck with sampling.
But the way he did it was kind of brilliant. The DJ collected a few stacks of classical vinyl records, played them until he found the pieces/samples he liked, put them together into a song he liked, then gave that to Stephen Webber at the Berklee College of Music, who put the track to sheet music and taught Premo how to make a symphony Then he had Nas drop a hot 16 on it.
The resulting track, "Regeneration," is pretty good (and trained classical ears will probably recognize some of the "samples"). It's a testament to what can be done when smart musicians try something new. Watching the song – and many of the other cuts from the Re:Generation project – come together in the documentary, which began showing at the South by Southwest Film festival Friday, is what makes it brilliant. (All tracks from the project can be downloaded for free.)
Re:Generation isn't the best documentary of the year, but it did give birth to one of the coolest moments of hip-hop-meets-classical ever. Grab just a taste of the magic in a clip (edited together from parts of the film) below.
Re:Generation is currently playing in select cities.
