Grab the popcorn, because we’re in the midst of a good old online spat between two big-name UK electronic music producers.
It began when Nick Bracegirdle - AKA ‘Nick Chicane’ of Chicane - took to TikTok over the weekend to post “the video I never thought I’d have to make.”
“This is my right to reply to all the comments online about the new Calvin Harris record Blessings’ similarity to my 30-year-old Offshore,” he said.
@nickchicane Copyright Alert 🫨🫨🫨🫨 feel free to share the truth & facts laid out here.
♬ original sound - nickchicane
In the video, Bracegirdle then heads over to a Logic Pro session and plays a clip of “the original Offshore”, albeit one that sounds like it’s been pitchshifted from F minor to C minor. “We all remember that,” he continues, “but if you start Offshore halfway through that riff and loop it, you get this.”
After playing this back, Bracegirdle then plays the two records layered on top of each other, starting with Blessings and then, gradually faded in (and then out again), the section of Offshore that he’s referring to.
After stopping the track, Bracegirdle says: “I think you’ll probably agree it’s really hard to decipher when one comes in and one goes, and that is because they are almost identical, which is a bit of a problem.”
It’s obvious what Bracegirdle is implying here, but for anyone left in any doubt, he adds: “I am defending my copyright and my intellectual property here guys and I’d like to know what your comments are.”
Comments, you say? Well, it turns out that Calvin Harris has a few of those, but we’re not sure that Bracegirdle is going to like them. Yesterday, he posted his own video, which he called a “response to people calling me a plagiarist over the last couple of days,” and he didn’t hold back.
It begins with Harris lining up the original versions of the two songs. “OK, so far I’m not hearing it,” he says, as they jar against each other. So he gets to work with his pitchshifting plugin in a bid to recreate Bracegirdle’s arrangement.
@calvinharris Response to the people calling me a plagiarist over the last couple of days after that guys video, all the best x
♬ Blessings - Calvin Harris & Clementine Douglas
He doesn’t quite get the same result, as far as we can hear, but Harris’s argument is that Bracegirdle has taken a small section of his track, looped it and played it alongside a specific section of Blessings, which when played in its entirety has a different chord progression and developing riff.
After chucking a few expletives in his accuser’s direction, Harris says: “You can play two notes over multiple different chords. That’s a fact. Do it all the time - it’s a thing. It’s not the same!”
And, just to throw something else in the mix, Harris goes on to bring a third track into play, Tangerine Dream’s 1984 Love On A Real Train, from the soundtrack to Risky Business. This was released some 12 years before Offshore, and according to Harris, bears more than a few similarities.
We’ll be watching to see where this one goes next.
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