June 18, 2008 11:53

Crystal Castles accused of 'stealing' samples

Band respond to allegations regarding early songs

Photo Gallery: Crystal Castles
Photo: Tom Martin

Following on from the story in this week's NME (cover date June 21) about Crystal Castles' alleged use of other people's images and samples without permission, further details have emerged about the furore surrounding sampling in some of the band's earliest songs.

Pitchfork reports that members of the 8bitpeoples Collective, who make 'chip music' inspired by classic video game sounds, are claiming that the band have used their music against the terms of its use.

The collective regularly post free downloads of chip artists' music on its website and allows free copying, distribution and transmission of the works so long as the person using it attributes the original, doesn't alter it, and doesn't use it for commercial purposes.

8bitpeoples have alleged that Crystal Castles have "violated every term of the licence" by using music by chip artists Lo-Bat and Covox in some of their early songs, which have subsequently appeared online.

Crystal Castles' Ethan Kath responded by admitting to the sampling but explained that they just occurred when he was experimenting on early demos and were never intended for commercial use.

"These infringing songs are early unreleased tracks which were never performed," he said. "They are the most awful tracks associated with the band and Alice [Glass, singer] herself hasn't heard most of these tracks. I put these tracks together myself and then discarded them because I thought they were too poor for release."