I thought this was interesting. I recieved an email today from two separate people forwarding on a message from Detroit Techno legend Kevin Saunderson. The letter basically explains that he has found that someone has sampled his work (which we would all assume is no longer flying off the shelves), yet this Italian duo’s re-edit or re-work IS gaining some momentum.
There is definitely some anger as obviously he would like to be credited for this track, and because he hasn’t is now giving away the ‘original’ of his tune as well as the track in question by Italian duo Supernova, now titled ‘Beat Me Back‘.
*the funniest part was him being so generous in giving away a 192kb rip of the original, and a wav of the Supernova track.*
When I was reading all this I did a little bit of research and it appears that a couple of people are credited for this tune. Now if you are a 1980′s Detroit Techno historian, please advise me if I have made any mistakes, I have just read into this as much as I can, but obviously don’t know everything.
The original track ‘The Sound‘ appears to have been released under Kevin Saunderson‘s alias Reese & Santonio.
An extremely similar track was released by Todd Terry as ‘Back To The Beat‘ the same year on his album ‘To The Batmobile, Lets Go‘. On both releases they are credited as being the sole creator of the track.
People have also credited the ESP track ‘It’s You‘ as the original track from which both artists took the sample in the beginning.
Anyway I will let you decide after reading the statement from Saunderson himself.
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Reese & Santonio – The Sound (Original Mix) (192)
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Supernova – Beat Me Back (Original Mix) (192)
**FROM THE DESK OF KEVIN SAUNDERSON
Dear friends, fans and members of the music industry
Today I’m giving away as a free download one of the productions I am most proud of.
I recorded “The Sound” back in 1987 and released it on my own KMS Records label. It was a massive hit at New York’s Paradise Garage and in Chicago and of course Detroit. Once it hit the UK it became one of the earliest Detroit anthems all around Europe, a huge underground record across the globe – a true desert island techno track. It is such a special record to me because it was one of my first really successful productions and I hope that you all will enjoy this free, fresh digital download of my original 1987 version.
The reason I have decided to give this track away for free is because of a situation that recently developed involving the unauthorized sampling of “The Sound” by Italian producers Giacomo Godi & Emiliano Nencioni (Supernova) in their release “Beat Me Back” on Nirvana Recordings. It came to my attention that they are licensing and selling, with considerable success, this track which is nothing more than a continuous loop of the main hook from “The Sound.”
For me to hear ‘Supernova’ taking an extended loop of “The Sound” and claiming that this is their own original composition and production is both dishonest and disrespectful. My first thought was that they were perhaps naïve, but as they have apparently been recording together since 2002 this seems unlikely. In any event this is completely unacceptable, we cannot continue to let this kind of wholesale rip off go unchallenged and tolerate “artists” who completely sample recordings, add nothing of their own and then release the results as their own work.
I have a huge affection for sampling, it’s how some of the most inspiring and ground breaking tracks of our times were created. We’ve pretty much all sampled records at some time, and cleared the sample so we can use it on our releases, but it is just not cool to take someone else’s music, create a big old loop of it and then put your name on it and try to have success entirely off the back of another artist’s efforts. This really has got to stop. For this reason, I have uploaded the Godi/Nencioni version of “The Sound” to Soundcloud so that you all can download this for free if you so wish. These producers and their record label should not be profiting from my back catalogue… this is not their track to sell.
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