David Herrero has been accused of illegally lifting the vocal from the Underground Resistance classic "Transition" for one of his own tracks.
The Spanish producer's track, "Make A Transition," came out via Stereo Productions, the label run by Chus & Ceballos, on a compilation called Miami 2017. It uses the vocal from the 2002 Detroit techno classic, which vocalist Cornelius Harris says was done without permission in a Facebook post.
Stereo Productions sent a statement to RA saying they "deeply regret" the situation, and that once they received notice of the infringement they moved "immediately... to remove it from all sales platforms and [their] own channels."
"Unfortunately we didn’t know the original track where the vocal was taken from," the statement adds. "Apologies for this, we are doing everything needed to repair this situation from the very first moment."
Herrero is a relatively prominent name in the tech house circuit, having released for labels like Viva Music, Defected, Nervous Records and Ole Records, in addition to his ongoing relationship with Stereo Productions.
RA also reached out to Harris for comment. Read his statement in full.
My friend Ross Carlos Nilmmns is the one who brought this to my attention and as I was ill, he made the initial request to have it taken down (at my request).
While one of the label guys, "Poco" Oliveira, replied, a lot of it was the standard, "we didn't know, we will remove it, but this takes time" bullshit that some labels tend to reply with when they know they've done wrong. But here's the thing.
Chus & Ceballos have done this before. For a mix on Toolroom a few years back they used another bootleg claiming they didn't know it was a bootleg even though it was titled "Transitions (Bootleg Remix)." So for whatever reasons these guys have a love for bootleg versions of Transition and not paying the original creators.
Would we say "no" to the release and forgo the money? Very possibly. But that doesn't matter. You don't take other people's work and release it as your own and you seek out bootlegs to sell in your mixes.
As I've stated online, DJs make unofficial versions of tracks and post them on SoundCloud, Mixcloud, YouTube, whatever. They program them in their sets and make unique and special versions. Black Dog once did a mix that was all their remixed versions of UR tracks. But there's a HUGE jump from that to this. And Chus & Ceballos and every label they release with knows this.
Compare the two tracks below.