Geoff Barrow Says Phantogram Sampled Him Without His Permission

Just year after dispute between Portishead’s instrumentalist Geoff Barrow and Abel Tesfaye aka The Weeknd over, literally, re-sampling Portishead’s song ‘Machine Gun’ in his song ‘Belong To The World’, a new scandal is rising. Although, this time – a lot less one-sided.

Now Geoff Barrow accused Phantogram (calling the band ‘Pantogram’) of sampling him without permission. Tweeting the band twice over the past week, Geoff claims that Phantogram’s 2009 single ‘When I’m Small’ beat is the exact copy of 2002’s Jimi Entley Sound track called ‘Charlie’s Theme’, with Barrow on drums. He also attached the link to a Who Sampled page, proving his point.

The reason Geoff Barrow raised the issue is… Gillette ad, featuring Phantogram’s ‘When I’m Small’ ‘…about 6 times a day’, according to Geoff.

It took four days for Phantogram to respond, and below you can see what’s this story turning into, especially Geoff’s latest tweet:

Compare the samples by yourself below:

Phantogram “When I’m Small”

Jimi Entley Sound “Charlie’s Theme” (alleged sample starts at 0:12)

Opinions may differ; though, there’s no debate that the sample is quite common, and could be produced by a drum machine, without using Geoff’s drum sample. Anyway, the truth is yet to be found out.