BREAKING FUCKING NEWS!!!! [Updated]

CRYSTAL CASTLES PLAGIARIZE CHIPTUNE ARTIST!!!!!!!!!!!!
DEVELOPING....

UPDATE 2:01AM
VIDEO HERE


HERE IS THE CRYSTAL CASTLES SONG IN QUESTION, "INSECTICON"
Crystal Castles - Insecticon

AND THE CLAIMED ORIGINAL SONG, BY AN ARTIST NAMED lo-bat WITH THE SONG "MY LITTLE DROID NEEDS A HAND"
WHICH CAN BE FOUND ON HIS WEBSITE, ON THE RIGHT
http://www.lo-bat.be/

AND HERE IS THE SOURCE I HAVE: A SOMETHINGAWFUL FORUM POST THAT LINKS TO THE 8BITCOLLECTIVE FORUMS, WHERE THIS RESEARCH WAS CONDUCTED.

According to the SomethingAwful post, several of the other songs also contain "sampled" material from chip artists.

AND they steal artwork, too.

This post by the same guy has a better summary than the SomethingAwful post.
And he gives a quote from an interview with them in Vice magazine, where they act like total pricks:

vice: You are tired and I don’t want to bother you anymore, but what about this bullshit on the internet between you and this guy pretending that you “stole his art” to do t shirts with Madonna’s fucked up face?

alice: This is really starting to bust our balls. The story is that this guy is not the real author of this illustration. We found this Madonna drawing on an old flyer for a punk gig. The artist re-drew it for us back when we were just a little band, and now that we have some sort of fame, he writes everywhere that we stole it. To tell the truth we always wanted to pay him but he is acting like he doesn’t know, because of all the noise around this story which brings him more publicity. So we had some arguments and we banned him from our myspace page.

ethan: Moreover, we are not rancorous and if this asshole reads your mag, tell him his cheque awaits him.

vice: Message sent…

More specific info on other songs/parts of songs Crystal Castles have sampled or stolen:


Another good post, with more information on similar (even worse) cases.



More to come....

Update: 2:24AM
One of the funniest things about this are replies on SomethingAwful from people getting their first listen to chiptunes and "8-bit" music and they say things like this:

I'm just shocked that anyone has ever listened to an 8-bit song for more than 30 seconds. Seriously 8-bit is just above the demo music that comes installed on your Casio keyboard. Can it get any dinkier?

...people like who listen to Tool or something.

-

Anyway. What do I think of all this? It's a shame. Just shows you the people who get famous doing this stuff are better at being marketers than being creative, so they resort to ripping shit off because they aren't actually better at the MUSIC. Just like Timbaland.

That's not to say these guys aren't good. The fact that they ARE good is why this sucks so much. Just like Timbaland. I didn't WANT to dislike Timbaland, because he's so good, but I had to sort of "boycott" him to punish him for what was obviously wrong. Maybe the worst part is I never gave his two big albums that summer, Justin Timberlake's and Nelly Furtado's, much of a shot. NOT!

So now here we have Crystal Castles, a band that is actually good, doing stuff that hasn't been widely heard beyond the thriving video game music scene, and we find out that they aren't really as creative as we thought. And that they are in fact dishonest, and willing to play dirty.

Now, my understanding of the band is that they are kind of a one man band, the guy, whoever he is, and the girl just sings sometimes. That was my impression. So it's most likely this guy doing this. And they're stealing artwork, too, from other pixel artists. It seems as though this guy loves this stuff, and trowls these sites because it's so good. But they're desperate for fame, or just ambitious, and he steals this shit that is so good he knows he can't make it better, and uses it. The artwork article also talks about how their record label re-released their debut album with the "BANNED COVER!" edition with the stolen artwork, AGAIN, after it had been requested to be taken down. And this Last Gang Records is apparently secretly funded by Canadian music moguls. So this Crystal Castles guy is smart enough to know where to look and make a buck off of what's gonna be cool when he shows it to the world.

So here we are faced with a choice: do we look the other way, and enjoy their music? Or do we boycott?

The worst part is that a boycott will not do any good. We have to at least spread the word, like we had to with Timbaland. But the also ambitious and power-hungry Ableton DJ-blogger boys of the world will just laugh it off because a lot of what's going on in that scene is ripping people off too. Loose morals, the whole lot of them.

Spread the word.

PS: Does this mean it's wrong for me to play trackers like Jeroen Tel, who specifically stipulate not to broadcast their work, on the radio or at DJ events?

Update: 3:20AM
Well, I'm going to bed soon, but for now, here's a list of some of the artists affected, both for them to get their recognition, and so I can check them out later.

lo-bat
trevor brown
Covox
Crazy Q
Ikuma
YM Rockerz, a net chiptune label Crazy Q is on.

One of the only good things about this is that these artists get a little recognition.