In New Documentary, A Musician Meets The People Whose YouTube Videos He Turns Into Art

James Hinton’s album Potential is far from ordinary. Rather than rely on his own original tunes, Hinton, whose stage name is The Range, turned to YouTube for an assist. For each track on Potential, The Range cut together samples from YouTube music videos to create music of his own.

The album was a hit, so The Range returned for an encore. In tandem with music publication Pitchfork, the 27-year-old artist created Superimpose, an EP featuring seven tracks that are included in a documentary of the same name.

The documentary, released on Pitchfork’s YouTube channel, follows The Range as he meets some of the unheralded and little-viewed musicians whose work he adapted for his new album. Along the way, viewers receive insights into his creative process and learn his views on digital media.

“Think about the life circumstances of a star—the likelihood that they’re experiencing

emotions that are not in some way related to their circumstance is very low,” The Range told Pitchfork in an accompanying interview. “There’s a much wider palette of emotions shown on YouTube, and you end up dealing with much more realistic, interesting things. There are people writing songs to their daughter and all sorts of specific things that would fall down in a popular context.”

If the plot of The Range’s documentary sounds familiar to you, it may be because you’ve seen this movie before. Last year, Israeli musician Kutiman starred in a film that examined his connection with a woman whose video he had used in one of his own compositions. Together, The Range and Kutiman form an interesting little sub-genre; if they want to keep their work going, there are certainly plenty more YouTube videos they mix, adapt, and mashup.