After a kind fan alerted me about this duo, I ended up here, scrolling Block & Crown’s discography and counting. One, two, three… sixty-five!
65 releases in 2021 alone. Not 2020 (I’ll reveal the statistic later). You have read it correctly. I counted them one by one just to be sure.
Who are these madmen? Honestly, I didn’t manage to gather much information about them. The Dutch duo is composed by Adri Blok & Mitch Crown, who delve mostly in Groove House with impressive records on Beatport, and most importantly, produce an insane amount of records. On Discogs, I’ve seen over 248 releases and 65 remixes starting from 2009 (with two releases on Spinnin’ Records!). On Beatport, where every single piece of music is counted (thus, 30 songs in an album equals 30 rows), we have 2300 entries (including remixes from other artists of B&C tracks).
Often we find ourselves amusing over the methods R3HAB and his other copycats (MOTi or Timmy Trumpet) have opted, releasing tracks on almost a weekly basis in order to stay relevant and thus multiplying their revenues tenfold. Even if Block & Crown are adopting an exponentially more aggressive strategy, the situation feels different in my opinion.
A quick perusing through their social media reveal their gargantuan catalogue, as it makes more clear that the mentioned pair aren’t trying to exploit the system by bombarding it with low-quality work: they have constantly created music in the form of mixes, compilations and other forgotten releases on labels I have never heard of. The amount is exaggerated yes, but I don’t see any greed here and a lucrative marketing plan (in fact, I barely managed to find their press picture), but rather a huge desire for their craft and a care less for social media. Whether they employ ghost-producers remains a mystery, however it doesn’t taint my optimistic view here.
So, it’s up to you to decide if Block & Crown deserve the “R3HAB Award”, knowing that their story perhaps has a more ethical rationale to it unlike from one of our voracious amigos. What’s sure is that a 189 releases in the past year is a feat untouchable and enigmatically astonishing.
What do you think?
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