Hello everyone on twoism, allow me to introduce myself.
My name is Daniel Salomón, and I suppose you could say I've been waiting a little bit over a year for this to finally happen.
In 2004, I completed an album's-worth of original material which I felt uncomfortable about making available for sale, given that I had some uncleared (and quite recognizable) samples on the album. They're rather easy to spot, but I felt I'd contextualized them in a way that was "tasteful." Back in 2002, I was living in Los Angeles and had just begun to make electronic music using Reason (version 2.5, which was a complete game-changer compared to working in Cubase VST 3.5.2!) After several years of having only shared my works with people I knew personally via handing off cassettes or CD-Rs of my music, I decided to contact a netlabel run by Torrentech.org and arranged to have two releases put out. One LP under the name Push-Button Saviour (PBS... No relation to PBS'73, to be clear) and an EP under the name FIDM.
(These releases are still available at
http://netlabel.torrentech.org/node/30 and
http://netlabel.torrentech.org/node/32 )
Within a few weeks of having made these available as free downloads via a Creative Commons license, I learned that the music from the Push-Button Saviour release had been made available for sale ($0.99 per track) on a number of different websites that I had not authorized. It bugged me that somebody else was making money from my music without my consent, and I contacted the admin from Torrentech about it. In short, he asked me "What do you want me to do about it?" and in a rather rude manner told me that he wasn't making money off of the sales either, and there was nothing he could do to help me. It put me off of releasing my music, because it was a perfect example of how easy it is for people to sell music that was not their own.
A few months later (on the six-year anniversary of the album's completion,) I made the album available for sale from a "legitimate" source, by posting it on my own Bandcamp page at
https://danielsalomon.bandcamp.com/albu ... edications where it has been available "Buy Now name your price" (in an effort to keep the spirit of the album's title.) Given that the album had already been in circulation for nearly a year and available elsewhere for free, I never expected to make any money from it, and haven't. Quite honestly, I've not done much to promote it.
Fast forward to the end of 2015, when a conversation with a friend of mine and I were discussing "bands that shamelessly rip-off Boards of Canada" and the name Eyesix came up. While listening to the album "Our Wilderness Projector" on the Carpe Sonum record label (at
https://carpesonum.bandcamp.com/album/o ... -projector ) I thought to myself "OH MAN... I thought *I* was blatantly copying BoC's sound. This dude is SHAMELESS!" and had a laugh at just HOW derivative of BoC his work was.
Then I heard a track titled "Cedaroak". It didn't just sound like a BoC knock-off track.
It sounded a bit TOO familiar... "Hey, I've used that sample before."
Then the initial chord progression began... "Wow, *I've* been sampled!"
After a nervous laugh, and a wait for new elements to be introduced, I was PISSED OFF.
This was my track, NO CHANGES WHATSOEVER TO IT.
I swapped over to another browser tab and opened up my album's page, and compared the track lengths. Eyesix's "Cedaroak" was only one second shorter than my song "Tomorrows" (Incidentally, this track was named over a decade before BoC released "Tomorrow's Harvest" - kinda weird, that.)
I concluded "this guy took my track, edited out the fade-out from the previous song and sold it off as his own. I was upset at the fact that this guy AND that Carpe Sonum were selling my music on Bandcamp. Given my experience with Torrentech.org, I was of the impression that contacting Carpe Sonum would similarly result in me being told "oops, sorry about that!" and probably having my song removed from the album on Bandcamp. At one point I thought to contact Carpe Sonum with a demo submission and a letter saying "I know you like my music given that you've already released it, under someone else's name. Check this out." ...but... Nah. Not cool.
Tonight I happened to end up on Carpe Sonum's page after streaming an album by Jacob Newman, and while there I clicked on the link to "Our Wilderness Projector" where I happened to learn of "The Eyesix Scandal". I've just read several pages of comments and learned that I am NOT ALONE in having had my music stolen by Jason Dowd. Knowing this both upsets me and relieves me. I'm not sure what I feel, all I know is that I'm glad to learn that the label formed to honor Pete Namlook is not deliberately making money off the sale of a person whose music is both painfully derivative of BoC AND stolen, to boot.
I'm writing this long of a post in hopes of expressing my gratitude to Carpe Sonum for having kept the Eyesix album online with a link to twoism.com's thread on this subject, as well as everyone else who has come together to work on this "Original Source Project." A comment on another thread that the folks at Sparkwood should remove the content altogether. I disagree. Let this post of mine serve as proof that this project is not being done in vain, and that keeping the music online for the purpose of allowing others to identify it is, in fact, working.
Hey... thanks for reading this far.
Respectfully,
Daniel Salomón
(The artist formerly known as PBS)
