Final Fantasy & Friends go on a festival club tour in three european capitals
Owen Pallett, singer/songwriter and head of Canadian band Final Fantasy will both
curate and headline the Maximum Black Festival in London, Berlin and Vienna in
February/March 2008. On stage he will be joined by friends of the calibre of
Deerhoof, Six Organs of Admittance, Dirty Projectors and Frog Eyes.
The name, Maximum Black , is derived from a song by the German band Bohren &
The Club of Gore, of whom Owen is a great fan.
The Maximum Black festival will be 100% funded by the Vienna Public Utility
company. This cooperation, however, is not a product of planned negotiations, but a
result of extraordinary circumstances.
Background
The Vienna Public Utility Company had commissioned an international advertising
agency to realize a new image campaign for them. The advertising company got in
contact with Final Fantasy about using their song “This is the song of Win & Regine”
as background music to a video campaign, but band and team had decided not to
licence their music for commercial purposes due to bad experiences in the past. As
a result the advertising company decided to ask another artist to write a song which
turned out to be a nearly identical cover of Final Fantasy’s original, and proceeded to
use it for their campaign. This plagiarism was not kept a secret for a long time. An impending law suit did not
suit the interests of both Final Fantasy and the Viennese company, and so they both
agreed to compromise: Final Fantasy, i.e. Owen Pallett and his team (Patrick Borjal &
Susanne Herrndorf) offered to curate a festival to be financially and logistically
supported by the Vienna Public Utility company. In return, the ‘cover’ of the Final
Fantasy original may be used for their campaign so long as a reference to Owen’s
work is credited.
