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Music

Has Hannah Wants Ripped Off Joy Orbison and Boddika?

Update: Boddika has responded to the situation on Twitter.

Update [September 13]: Boddika has responded to the situation on Twitter with a succinct couple of statements.

I write,mix,engineer & produce every track I've ever been involved with as Boddika & Instra:mental.

— Boddika (@Boddika)September 12, 2016

That's all I have to say on this situation. Xx

— Boddika (@Boddika)September 12, 2016

Update [September 12]: Hannah Wants has responded to the criticisms weighed against her in a lengthy Facebook post, which you can read in full below.

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Sniff your fingers, mate. Go on. No one's watching. Do it. Give them a proper, deep sniff. Done? Good. Right, now take a really fucking deep breath and inhale as much of your current surroundings as you can. What's that you can smell on yourself and others? You've got it: beef! That irony, rich, bodily stench of sizzling beef's clinging to every nook and cranny imaginable and there's not enough Lynx in the world to mask it.

"What's happened," you say, bleary-eyed and coffee-free. "Why do I smell like an abattoir?" The answer's simple my friend—it seems like Hannah Wants might have accidentally (or not so accidentally) ripped off a Boddika and Joy Orbison song. And the dance music internet's ready to claim it's pound of sirloin.

In a video posted on Facebook over the weekend, DJ Patrick Naze,i plays Hannah Wants' "Found the Ground" at the same time—and the same BPM—as the "Mercy (Boddika's VIP") by the aforementioned duo and…it is exactly the same. It is literally identical. In every way. There are no differences. At all. None whatsoever.

He's not wrong is he? That's the same record. A kinder soul might be inclined to bring up the idea of "unconscious plagiarism" or "cryptomnesia" in which repressed or forgotten memories re-emerge without the person in question having a conscious grasp on the fact that they've had that experience before. That's what a kinder soul might be inclined to do, and even then they'd likely have a bit of difficulty defending it in court. The fact that Wants' single has vanished from SoundCloud and online shops might indicate a lack of confidence in the cryptomnesia defence, too.

A slightly less kind soul might just say: Hannah Wants, for reasons we'll likely never know, has ripped off that Boddika and Joy O song wholesale and that in itself is sort of incredibly depressing. All artists have influences and points of reference, and one of the only good things to come out of postmodernism is the acceptance of collage and co-mingling as a creative necessity, but there's thinking, "Ah, I really liked what Basic Channel did, so maybe I'll try and think about their approach to music while I try and make my own," and "Yep, that Basic Channel record was good, maybe I'll just recreate it and put my name on it."

It'll be interesting to see how all parties involve respond to Nazemi's discovery. You can't imagine this one being swept under the carpet either quietly or quickly.

Josh is on Twitter