Aphex Twin and the morals of sampling

I didn’t know Aphex Twin‘s XTAL from the seminal electronic album Selected Ambient Works Vol 1 is based off samples from a track from Steve Jefferies, Mary Carewe & Donald Greig  called Evil At Play…but in a very cool way. But the original writer says it is ‘morally wrong’ and Richard D. James just lifted it wholesale…

Gyu Beats looks into this, and discovers how complex and layered XTAL is, and also how murky the line is between original, remake and creation. It’s a good video about these early productions (and I suspect the bass is echoed because he was using a four track or limited mixer and maybe could only echo the whole lot?) but shows the issues well about how sampling can be very creative.

But it is a little shitty that with all that money Aphex Twin has made, he never paid the guy for the sample. He did take the track way beyond the original, creatively. But should have at the least given co-write credits, or paid for the sample…I guess as a library music track, he thought he could use it as he wanted?

But library tracks need to be licensed…(although whether he did with Chappell directly we’ll never know – as a library track dunno if that income would filter back to the writers – co-writes would, mechanicals? Probably not)