In retrospect, the quote from Armin Van Buuren on Ben Nicky's Soundcloud claiming that he is "One of the hardest working DJs in the scene" is fucking hilarious. That's because it looks as if he's taken lost kings' remix of Disclosure's "Latch", renamed it, and uploaded it to his own SoundCloud. We're quite sure Ben Nicky will hit "delete" within the next few hours, but in the meantime, feel free to compare and contrast the two remixes below.
Ben Nicky's rendition includes an intro that doesn't sound like lost king's, but the build sounds damn near identical. The transition in Nicky's tune is odd, too, and we're sitting here wondering if he blended two remixes that he didn't create for one amazing super-theft. The irony of them fighting over a remix that neither had label or artist permission to remix or upload or remix isn't lost on us, though. We're also quite sure that Universal will be on the way shortly to flag and delete both of these, just as they did with Oliver Helden and Lido's.
Ed. Note: We're receiving word (h/t to Andrew at Your EDM) that Ben Nicky has a series of "headfucks" that are considered by some to be "glorified mashups." Which is cool. The problem with this logic is that no where on the SoundCloud page are the lost kings or any other artists sourced. If Ben Nicky did just edit the lost kings' remix, why are there no mention of them on the title of the track, the description, or the tags? If this is what happened, Nicky should fix his tagging and crediting ASAP.
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Ed. Note: Over night we received word from Ben Nicky that this article should be removed, because it's "based on stuff that isn't true." In looking at the SoundCloud page for his "Latch" headfuck, it's now been correctly tagged as "Disclosure vs. lost kings," with a new description of the track being added: "Mashup of lost kings breakdown with a psy track." Now, it'd be one thing if we'd lied about what went down—we hadn't. You can't simply make amends and correctly ID the "headfuck" then say someone is lying. You just finally got around to doing what you should've done in the first place.
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That said, it's not like Ben was exactly apologetic when responding to lost kings in the SoundCloud comments about this:
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"bennicky @wearelostkings: yes its a mashup of your fucking mashup, get a grip man. its not like you did an official remix or anything."
So fair play to Ben for properly crediting the track, but don't call us liars. Just properly credit what you're doing when you're sampling other people's material.
