The issue of edits across disco and house continues to be a hot topic, given the number of tracks containing classic disco samples making their way to YouTube, Soundcloud and beyond on a daily basis.

For the most part, it’s simply a case of some young producers attempting to showcase their new found abilities on Ableton and beyond, and are more so forgetting to credit possible samples and tracks used for edits. It becomes more than a simple slip up when some of the ‘big guns’ in dance music start ripping off tracks for their own gain.

The latest to do so is none other than Mark McCabe, who has taken the YouTube-notorious Mall Grab track ‘Feel Good House’ and basically re-branded it as his own tune.

The track itself had already been edited by British producer Elliot Adamson, who placed the classic Carmen ‘Time to Move’ acapella over the original MG track. To add insult to injury, that edit made it as far as Denis Sulta’s controversial BBC Radio One Essential mix, giving it even more exposure than it had already garnered through the generous algorithms that exist on YouTube.

Cue Maniac 2000 producer Mark McCabe, who thought of the bright idea of making his own edit of the track along with LMC, and going as far as to name it ‘Time to Groove’, simply a word away from the original sample’s name.

The problem is, is that the edit from McCabe and LMC is almost the exact same. This isn’t an underground nerd’s misunderstood problem with a track and its apparent similarity to another track, this is literally one track being renamed by two people that have just changed the pitch and made it a tiny bit clearer, not to mention of course the standard EDM build up which can’t be ignored if we’re really to call ourselves a house and techno magazine.

The surge of the popularity of electronic music within Ireland has definitely produced a healthy amount of disco and house edits that originally spawned in the wake of the original lo-fi house era, however McCabe’s offering to the bustling group of tracks is lazy at best and is especially bad given the difference between his audience and the audience of any underground producer.

If producer X hears an old track, edits it in his or her bedroom on Ableton that hasn’t even been on their banged up laptop for 6 months and shares it online without crediting whoever the original sample or track belongs to, it may be a crime, albeit a good-intentioned one.

If producer A sees how well underground artists and YouTube channels dedicated to that particular sound are doing, and then takes one of the most well known tracks and repackages it to their fanbase that may not be very aware of the underground community that has been existing in a world populated by plenty of tracks along that sound, it’s a little bit more than a rookie slip up, it’s a calculated move.

Bad luck Mark McCabe, we hear trance edits are making a comeback.

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