Crystal Castles Buy Black Eyed Madonna

09/23/08 12:17pm

by Steve McLean (CHARTattack)

Toronto electro-punk duo Crystal Castles and British artist Trevor Brown have settled the lawsuit launched by Brown over the group's uncredited use of his 1999-published "black eyed Madonna" image on T-shirts, flyers and records.

Crystal Castles' London, England-based Supervision Management team has paid Brown for the use of the image and has purchased the rights to it, ending a bitter dispute that dates back to 2006. Supervision (whose roster also includes Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs and The Cribs, among others) formerly managed Crystal Castles in Europe, but have now taken over control from Toronto's Mikey Apples for the world.

"they sent a letter, on behalf of the band, extending their apologies for my turbulent and unpleasant dealings with the aforementioned buffoon, a partner in idiocy: andy of lies records and crystal castles myspace, and, to my mind the most contemptible of all: last gang records, who really should have known better but…. bleurgh, i’ll avoid making a rant - i suppose this is business as usual in the music scene - crystal castles were disappointed to hear of how unprofessionally the matter was handled by everyone working for them whilst they were on the road," Brown wrote on his blog, which he used effectively to bring attention to the matter over the past seven months.

"and naturally, supervision were eager to resolve outstanding issues and start their duties with a clean slate - they wasted no time making a fresh offer to me for compensation and a buyout fee on the now notorious drawing - and, after finalising details, that money was on it’s way to me within 24 hours (!) - no muss no fuss - no stupid insults being thrown at me, no appalling contract to sign."

While Brown seems satisfied with the compensation and the way the situation was handled by Supervision, he still seems disappointed with Crystal Castles, as his post continues:

"for me it was a matter of principles more than the money itself - maybe i’m old-fashioned in regard to matters of integrity and common decency in this download generation age - but a little courtesy would not go amiss for crystal castles too - they were doing themselves no favours with the 'so what, who cares' attitude - it might impress every snotty 17 year old on the block but, as seen, it loses them the respect of more mature music fans and critics - but at last they’ve woken up to the fact this was their mess to clean up - it was pissing on their career more than mine - the negative press was never going to stop."

Crystal Castles, composed of multi-instrumentalist Ethan Kath and singer Alice Glass, are touring Europe now, but they'll be in Brown's adopted homeland of Japan for three shows in early October. Maybe they can get together and bury the hatchet, or perhaps it would just end up with someone getting a black eye like Madonna.

Crystal Castles and Lymbyc System play Toronto's Circa on Oct. 24 and Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom on Oct. 27.