Twice, it’s come close. In 1991, a dispute over a short vocal sample reached a preliminary hearing,  and a judge indicated the extract probably wasn’t too brief to count as a substantial part of the work. Then, the case settled, and the question died with it. Almost two decades later, another dispute over a repeated vocal sample in a successful UK release followed the same path: heading towards trial, then resolved before a judgment ever landed. Two chances for a UK court to set precedent. Two settlements instead.  

This isn’t unusual. It’s the pattern. Nobody wants to be the “test” case.  

Which leaves the industry running on something closer to folklore than law. Ask around, and you’ll hear that three seconds is roughly the threshold, the point below which a sample is safe to use without clearance. It sounds authoritative. It isn’t. No judge has established a general three-second safe harbour. It’s a rule of thumb that survives because everyone repeats it, not because the law confirms it.  

Two extremes, and a third path  

Compare that to the US, where the courts have taken a much stricter approach. In Bridgeport v. Dimension Films, the Sixth Circuit held that even a very short sample from a copyrighted sound recording could infringe. The sample at issue came from Funkadelic’s ‘Get Off Your Ass and Jam’: a short guitar section, pitched down and looped in N.W.A.’s ‘100 Miles and Runnin’. The court’s reasoning was blunt: get a license or don’t sample. No threshold at all. UK law never adopted that approach, and on paper, that should give British producers more freedom to work with short or minor samples than their American counterparts.  

Europe has found a third position, and this took a very long time. The Pelham saga involved nearly a quarter-century of courtroom ping-pong over a two-second sample. The sample was a short rhythm sequence from Kraftwerk’s ‘Metall auf Metall‘, which producer Moses Pelham looped as a baseline for the 1997 song ‘Nur mir’.  

In 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) held that even a very short sample can infringe a phonogram producer’s rights. But it also drew an important distinction: if the sample is modified so that it is unrecognisable to the ear, it no longer counts as reproduction of part of the original recording for the purposes of that right. The question wasn’t simply how much had been taken, but whether the original recording remained recognisable. Short doesn’t necessarily mean free, but neither does every act of borrowing automatically amount to infringement. Convoluted, to say the least.  

Then came Pelham II. On 14 April 2026, the CJEU’s Grand Chamber gave an authoritative interpretation of the pastiche exception in EU copyright law. It confirmed that sampling can qualify as pastiche in principle, but stopped short of creating a general permission to borrow from existing recordings. The new work must engage with the earlier one in the way the exception requires;  simply taking a sample does not automatically qualify.  

This progress, unfortunately, isn’t a green light. The decision doesn’t upend licensing practices, and the case now goes back to Germany’s Federal Court of Justice to decide whether this particular sample qualifies. Even after decades of litigation and two trips to Luxembourg, the answer for the 

track that started it all remains unresolved. The judgment also leaves questions about how the pastiche exception applied to particular forms of commercial sampling.  

The implications for the UK are less straightforward. S30A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act  1988 already provides an exception for caricature, parody and pastiche, but Pelham II interpreted the EU provision rather than the UK statute directly. Whether its reasoning will shape the interpretation of the UK exception remains an important question for producers seeking greater certainty about when sampling is permissible.  

Folklore at Work  

Back in the UK, nobody has the benefit of a ruling, and research into UK producers finds an industry that behaves as though clearance is required regardless of length or prominence, proceeding with  caution even where the law doesn’t technically demand it. A country with a more permissive rule, a country with none at all, and a court still working out a middle path end up producing roughly the same behaviour: play it safe, clear everything, don’t test anything.  

That caution has a price attached, and it’s been measured. Clearance fees for a single substantial sample climbed toward the £10,000–£20,000 range by 2011. In some cases, rightsholders have asked for as much as 80% ownership of the new track as the cost of saying yes. In at least one documented instance, a track built around a sample was reclassified entirely as a cover version, and every penny of publishing went to the original songwriter, not the person who made the new record.  

The best-known British example is The Verve’s ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’. The band obtained permission to use an orchestral recording of the Rolling Stones’ ‘The Last Time‘, performed by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra. But the dispute over the underlying composition became a costly lesson in how recording rights and songwriting rights can diverge. The band lost the songwriting royalties and credit, with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards credited as co-writers. In 2019, they agreed to return the credits and future royalties to The Verve’s frontman, Richard Ashcroft.  

Other examples are quieter. Producers swap a recognisable riff for something more obscure, or pay session musicians to replay rather than use the original recording. That can avoid the need to clear the original master recording, but doesn’t necessarily remove the need to consider the copyright in the underlying composition. Sometimes the sample is dropped altogether. The track changes before  

it ever reaches the public.  

The same questions are beginning to surface in AI music, where disputes over the use of existing recordings to train models raise difficult questions about permission and creative reuse. The technology is different, and the legal issues aren’t identical, but the underlying tension is familiar:  how do you protect existing work without making new forms of creativity harder to pursue?  

None of this gets decided by argument alone. It gets decided by who can afford to wait out a negotiation and who can’t. A major label with a settlement budget can make an inconvenient case disappear before it even reaches a judge. An independent producer facing the same uncertainty usually can’t risk finding out what a court would say, so they don’t.  

So the law stays exactly where it’s always been. Unconfirmed. Not because there are no plausible ways to draw the line, but because the people who might force the issue often have more to lose than to gain.  

The sample might last two seconds. The uncertainty can last decades.

The Illness have now returned ahead of this year’s All Saint’s Eve festivities with a suitably themed animated video created by Andy Donovan to accompany ‘Glitter Witches’, which is released today, 20th October through Sea Records.

The new video sees childhood friends Tabi, Lily, Ellie, and Phoebe transforming into the Glitter Witches and to mark the occasion, Sea Records are releasing a limited-edition sticker pack featuring all the characters.

The video has already been screened at the Greek Chaniartoon International Comic & Animation Festival this summer. https://www.chaniartoonfest.gr/ 

The first single to be shared from the record is ‘Random Violence,’ a majestic tribute to Optimo’s Keith McIvor which sets the tone for the album. A passionate socialist, Keith (aka JD Twitch) was a DJ, a curator and one of the country’s most forward-thinking promoters, a man who inspired the power of positivity in the people he worked with and played for — an effect echoed in what the band’s Al Doyle calls the song’s “human connection”.

Joe Goddard from the band explains: ‘Last year in September our old friend and brilliant DJ Keith McIvor of Optimo in Glasgow passed away after a diagnosis of an inoperable brain tumour a few months earlier. He largely inspired the words of the song.  He was a passionate music lover and a staunch believer in socialism.  Many of the words relate directly to his death and to memories of being in Sub Club in Glasgow where we met 20 years ago.’

Directed by Jack Cole, the video for ‘Random Violence‘ features the all-female progressive morris dancing side Boss Morris and is a beautiful celebration of togetherness, music, resistance, love and a life well lived. They shall not pass. 

Al Doyle: ‘We invited some woodland spirits, cursed animals and crazed dancers to join us in a celebration of humanity, remembrance and resistance. The genesis of the idea came from the Optimo Espookio Halloween parties we experienced at Sub Club and we wanted to capture that feeling in the video. It was exactly as much fun as it looks, which is to say we had an absolute blast.’

The video may be seen below:

The album tracklisting is as follows:

1. Stuck Around
2. Waiting Around
3. Random Violence
4. The Mask Is Slipping
5. Splinter
6. Shortcut To Love
7. Me In Your Head (feat. Beth Ditto)
8. Hook Me Up
9. Secular Hymns
10. The Garden (feat. Eddie Chacon)
11. Crushing

To coincide with the album announcement and to celebrate Keith McIvor’s legacy, Hot Chip will be DJing with friends at Glasgow’s Sub Club this week on October 21.

A Long Way From Kansas is available to pre-order on deluxe double gatefold LP with additional 7”, standard double gatefold LP, CD and digitally. The first pressings of the deluxe and standard LP will have a limited-edition spot gloss and foil blocking sleeve. 

The album may be pre-ordered HERE

Hot Chip will play the following live dates:

MARCH

4 – 3Olympia, Dublin
6 – Leeds Beckett Students’ Union, Leeds
8 – SWG3 Galvanizers, Glasgow
9 – Albert Hall, Manchester
10 – O2 Academy, Bristol
12- Exhibition White City, London

If you pre-order the album you gain access to the pre-sale, general sale is from October 23.

Hot Chip formed in 2000, as each member basked in the warmth of the millennium’s glow. In the days, months and years that followed, Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard, Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin channelled love and harmony through their art, creating an eight-album arc that melds the brain, the heart and the feet. Yet when they arrived at Joe and Al’s East London studio, Relax and Enjoy, earlier this year to record A Long Way From Kansas, the band felt they had to confront those unfolding stories and those nagging questions.

Alexis Taylor: ‘A Long Way From Kansas reflects the general sense that the world we live in — the world we were making our record in — is particularly harsh, discordant, violent and depressing. Maybe none of that’s new, and that doesn’t mean that every song is talking about the world and politics and genocide, but it was an unavoidable backdrop while making the music. Distortion came to be a bit of a watchword for the whole record.‘

I don’t really know much about birds, but the album title is pretty spot on, as ‘Murmuration’ is, apparently, the low hum made by those vast, beautifully choreographed flocks of starlings as they simultaneously flap their wings and take to the sky.  Some people say that the frequency of this unique, rumbling, oscillating sound can cure diseases… I can neither confirm or deny this, but it’s quite comforting to think of in these trying times. The duo have an amiable approach to things; these songs often feel like wonderful little vignettes in their own right.

Unusually, it’s a fairly gentle song to open the album. ‘Ride Alone‘ is a Syd Barrett meets Gruff Rhys slice of whimsy. Often, what may seem fairly light on first hearing actually has a much darker underbelly. This is exemplified in the album’s second track – and first single – ‘Lie Down With Dogs, Stand Up With Fleas‘ which deals with the expression of exasperation at our passivity in the face of lame authority (politicians and the public in both the UK and US should really be taking note at this point). It’s also quite impressive musically, having bits that sound like the Beach Boys being backed by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band (you’ll see what I mean when you listen to the album!)

This album also has a fair amount of personal observation too. ‘Polka Dot Eyes‘ is a piece of sharp social observation, portraying Lancashire lads – friends from school – who joined the Army and returned home physically and mentally damaged. ‘Scary Movies‘ looks at exactly this – a poignant description of Bobby and Emma’s grandfather, who delighted in showing them horror films when they were kids – giving them sneak previews of the darkness they’d come to embrace as adults (and produced brilliantly layered songs like this one), complete with a shouted-out list of some of those films. Also worth singling out is the title track, which is wonderfully dreamy sounding for much of the song, beautifully bookending a bit where it all goes wonderfully mental.

An effervescent, joyful spoonful of indie-pop that makes for a much-needed ray of sunshine as the winter months approach, and with a deliciously dark undercurrent. Each time I listen to it, I love it more, and discover something else lurking just below the surface. Skep Wax have, once again, delivered another one of the year’s best albums. Don’t just stream it, buy it, damn it!

“You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, when I met you…don’t you want me babbbbby????“…if ever a track summed up a decade in music, it’s ‘Don’t You Want Me‘, the final single to promote synth-pop perfection Dare by The Human League. Spawning many copycats and causing school reunions to go into meltdown from the nineties to the present day, Dare saw the band achieve massive commercial success for the first time.

Before Dare was released, vocalists Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley had to make a decision: do they leave the group who previously had mixed success, in order to go to university, or do they take the plunge, and go full time with The Human League. Thankfully for us, the young women had the balls to postpone higher education, and a genre-defining album was born.

At a time when electronic bands were heavily instrumental-based, The Human League strove for thought-provoking lyrics that made you think and reflect, rather than relying on the music alone. Often the true meaning behind their songs have been left untold.

‘The Sound Of The Crowd‘ saw Catherall and Sulley put down on record for the first time, with enormous success. The now immediately recognisable back-and-forth, male/female of Human League vocals was born. It’s a true dance song that still reverberates today. In tracks like ‘Darkness‘, the bite the group posses comes out, with melancholy synthesizers helping to recount the fear and helplessness one can feel during a sleepless night plagued by unwanted thoughts.

Dare always has, and always will, ooze cool. The atmosphere and gravitas in the record creates a timeless album produced by one of the most iconic bands of the eighties.