An Italian EDM duo called Nari and Milani are in hot water over an apparent case of plagiarism. Numerous listeners have pointed out that Nari and Milani's new single "Triangle" sounds suspiciously like the French producer Mr. Oizo's 1999 song "Flat Beat". Indeed, Mr. Oizo himself took note of the song's resemblance to his own and called out the Italian duo, suggesting, "good promo plan for cheap: copy a classic tune and put it out like it's yours. also don't forget to look douchee" (sic). (However you choose to spell it, they do actually look pretty douchey.)
Previews of "Triangle", originally posted by Doorn Records, have been removed from YouTube and SoundCloud, apparently by the label itself. But a copy of the clip has been archived on Zippyshare, and it's definitely very, very, very similar to "Flat Beat":
Listen to the two back to back, and there's no mistaking the resemblance. Nari and Milani's bass riff is in the same key, uses the same squarewave sound, and follows the same notes in the same essential rhythmic pattern. They've changed the positioning of certain glissandi, and they haven't copied Oizo's stumbling fills note for note, but the predominance of that flatulent, backwards-sounding main note, combined with their own cosmetic attempts to insert a degree of variation, is enough to pretty definitively pin a charge of plagiarism on them.
Since Doorn has taken down the previews, case closed, right? Oh, would that it were so. No, Nari and Milani decided to go dig themselves deeper. As Mixmag pointed out late last week, the duo took to Facebook to plead their case. Their excuse? They say they took their bass riff not from "Flat Beat", but from a sample pack by Vengeance, a popular maker of beats and loops. They write, "Please check this file in your audio library : 'VEC3 Special Sounds 94 Root D 130 BPM. It's outhere, available to everyone... it's on sale... everybody can go and use it legally, as we did. We assume that several producers, more or less famous, uses music elements from #venegeance. Just simple as that." And then, to bolster their case, they add that last year, a producer named Chas Zoo also used the very same Vengeance bass loop for a song called "The Funk".
In other words, they can't possibly be copying Mr. Oizo, because they're just copying someone else.
(The hilarious thing is that if you Shazam "Triangle", Shazam thinks it's "Flatbeats", by an act called Lunde Bros.—a song that, sure enough, is based on the same damn Vengeance loop, but at least has the decency to be titled in homage to the Mr. Oizo song.)
A commenter on their Facebook page located the sample; apparently, it comes from the Vengeance Essential House Vol. 3 sample pack. Another user uploaded the sound to Zippyshare, and it's definitely the riff they used in "Triangle". Setting aside for a moment the fact that Nari and Milani clearly knew that the Vengeance sample they used sounded like "Flat Beat", because they indicate as much in their Facebook post, the real question is this: Why on earth would a pair of "producers" think that it was acceptable to copy the principal motif for one of their songs directly from a sample pack? Why aren't they mortified that they should have to admit to using generic, readymade content? Wouldn't it be a thousand times less embarrassing to just say that they copied "Flat Beat" from Mr. Oizo—it is, after all, an iconic song—rather than copping to using a plug-and-play loop that they fucking know copies "Flat Beat", and, moreover, they know has already been used by someone else?
I was going to say, because they thought they could get away with it. But on second thought, the answer is actually more complicated, and more interesting. Because it's clear that for these producers, who I suspect are all too representative of commercial EDM as a whole, they don't even think there's anything to get away with. They feel no shame because for them, buying pre-made loops and plugging them into an arrangement (almost certainly with other pre-made loops) is the most natural thing in the world. They have no concept that there's more to making music than combining readymade pieces. They have no concept that creating is different from consuming.
And I'm not sure they're alone in this! In a contemporary mediascape defined by aggregation and Tumblr-style "curation"—and before a public that expects all dance music to sound exactly alike, conditioned by one-hour sets peppered with the same slim handful of identikit chart-toppers—why would they believe any differently?
Spacemen 3 once wrote "Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To"; it's clear that the prevailing attitude among EDM producers is "consuming content to make content to"—well, to take drugs to. Maybe they should just cut out the middleman, scrap those enormous DJ fees, and everyone could take drugs while wiling out to Vengeance sample packs. Loops for everyone! The first one's always free.