Spazio Disponibile, the label run by Donato Dozzy and Neel, has taken to Facebook to question the originality of two techno tracks released in late 2018.
"What [does] sampling mean nowadays?" asked the label earlier today. "Is it about taking a pre-existing source and elevating it to a new musical form or is it about taking other artists' material, as it is, and using it as a foundation for a new production? What is the line that separates musical inspiration from plagiarism?"
In the post, Spazio Disponibile link to two recent examples, first comparing "Malandra" by Crossing Avenue (released on the Spazio Disponibile label in 2017) to "Hanami" by the Berlin-based duo Beat Movement. The second pairs Dozzy's 2011 remix of Mike Parker's "FDW" with "Unsaid IX" by Greek producer Judas.
"Unsaid IX" features on ARTS V - Five Years Of Arts, a compilation from the Berlin-based label ARTS. The outlet was founded in 2013 by Emmanuel Beddewela, who was at the centre of a plagiarism scandal in 2015 when Tresor recalled a 12-inch after it was discovered that two of the tracks mimicked tunes by Stanislav Tolkachev and Alexey Volkov.
Beddewela and Judas declined to comment for this article. Beat Movement, AKA Mattia Prete and Simone Scardino, responded with this statement. As we clarified on Facebook with a short
video of the VST used in our track, we didn't sample Crossing Avenue. Spazio Disponibile accused us of sampling this track without having a conversation with us. We only received an email but didn't get the chance to answer. To answer the people who commented on Spazio Disponibile's post saying that artists shouldn't use presets but should learn to play analog machines: when the track was made we had to use a digital VST as the entire equipment of our studio in Berlin was stolen right before. We're currently working to replace it. We're very sorry that big artists that we respect like Donato [Dozzy] and Guiseppe [Tillieci, AKA Neel] think this about upcoming artists.