(Green Light Media and Marketing) 2012
Well, Ralph sang songs by Link Wray, Velvet Underground and Captain Beefheart on Lawless, The Clash on Dwight Yoakam - Under The Covers, and even got to share the stage with Elton John on The Speaking Clock Revue... but this definitely has to be his most unexpected and unusual collaboration...
The Re:Generation project was funded by Hyundai as a promotional tool for their new 'Veloster' car. A documentary film was made following five hip DJs, who were each given the task of interacting with a particular genre of music - ranging from classical, jazz, rock, soul/motown and country. The end results were somewhat uneven, but the journey they all take and the challenges they face are quite amusing, and mostly uplifting.
Hip-hop and classical music are odd bed fellows, to say the least, yet DJ Premiere and the musicians/conductor are having a blast. Legendary LA rockers' The Doors and the New Orleans' jazz dudes also collaborate relatively smoothly, but there's more tension in studio between Mowtown legend Martha Reeves and 'The Crystal Method', as they try to find acceptable lyrics; and similarly Ralph's encounter with DJ 'Pretty Lights' is erm.. awkard.
To be fair, DJ 'Pretty Lights' got a daunting task of making a dance track from country music. Not being a fan of the music, he's seen taking a crash-course around Nashville before finding something in Burl Ives' arrangement of Wayfaring Stranger and deciding to get Ralph to sing...
DJ 'Pretty Lights':- "When I heard the Burl Ives' version of 'Wayfaring Stranger', my research pretty much stopped. It had the soul, it had the sadness... and the same thing kind of happened when I heard Ralph Stanley's voice for the first time. He has the soul and the sound, the tone, everything in his voice that I looked for... an amazing amount of emotion and beauty, but (there's) this darkness to it."
In the studio, however, the Nashville musicians are giving him a very passive aggressive stance as Ralph and James Alan Shelton arrive. Ralph, as ever, could only really do the song his way... Contemporary country singer LeAnn Rimes was subsequenty drafted in, and 'Pretty Lights' worked up the result which you can hear on youtube. The footage around the making of the track and the entire film were also on youtube, but this has now been removed. Still you can get a flavour of it in the Official Trailer.
In addition to the 12" promo listed below, there was also a CD-R promo, a CD-R of remixes (including an two mixes of Wayfaring Stranger) and an MP3 album.
Track: |
Artist: |
Title: |
Time: |
Date: |
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A-1 |
The Crystal Method |
I'm Not Leaving |
??:?? |
2012 |
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A-2 |
Skrillex |
Breakin' A Sweat |
??:?? |
2012 |
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A-3 |
DJ Premiere |
Re-Generation |
??:?? |
2012 |
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B-1 |
Mark Ronson |
A La Modeliste |
??:?? |
2012 |
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?? |
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B-2 |
Pretty Lights |
Wayfaring Stranger |
??:?? |
2012 |
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