UK producer Sohrab accuses Seuil of plagiarism

UK producer Sohrab has publicly accused Seuil of plagiarising one of his forthcoming tracks.

Sohrab, via Instagram, claims that Seuil’s “Keep It Natural (No Mouse Edit),” which is out this month on London label Cartulis Music, is a “blatant” copy of his own “Old Beginning.” The latter, due out next year, was made in 2018 and has since been played by “a handful of ‘known’ DJs,” according to Sohrab.

“There is a (not-so) fine line between inspiration or sampling and plagiarism,” he writes. “In a close-knit, niche scene like ours, this type of blatant copying is extremely disrespectful. Not only towards an up-and-coming artist like myself, but also towards the label involved, who now find themselves in the awkward and undeserved situation of releasing a plagiarised work.”

A couple hours before Sohrab’s post went live, Cartulis Music issued its own statement via Facebook. “We immediately talked to Seuil—who denied any kind of plagiarism. He said that all tracks on the EP are his own original work… We understand there are two sides to every story and this situation is impossible for us to decide for 100 percent who is right or wrong.” (Seuil declined to comment for this article.)

The statement adds that the label, after having been contacted by Sohrab, tried to get the track removed from the EP, only to discover that their distributor, Juno, had already sold 200 of the 300 copies, which put the team “in a situation we wished to avoid and no way back due to the economical cost of releasing vinyl.”

That said, Cartulis Music says it has removed the track preview from SoundCloud and every online shop. It will also donate any profits from the EP to a non-governmental organisation.

Read Sohrab’s post, which includes snippets of the two tracks, and Cartulis’ statement in full.

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