The Internet it has to be said is a beautiful and wondrous thing when it comes to music. On this occasion I am not talking about the ability to download any track or album you can think of legally or, in most cases, otherwise. I’m talking more about the discovery of music and artists that you may once have managed to go through life without ever hearing.
Take Fritz von Runte for instance. Up until a few months ago I’d never heard of the guy but one Sunday I received a tweet on Twitter pointing me in the direction of 2001: A Space Oddity. That tweet was in response to a script that had tweeted my most listened to tracks on last.fm of which David Bowie was one. I was curious, the marriage of two things I enjoy; Bowie and Kubrick’s Space Odyssey. I was prepared to be disappointed but instead found myself unlocking my PayPal wallet and purchasing not only the CD but the DVD, even tho the tracks and movie are freely available on the site.
I later travelled up to Manchester, where Fritz is based, to attend a screening of the movie and to hear Fritz perform a DJ set. We briefly chatted and have since gone on to exchange friendly banter on Twitter. Just the other day I asked my twitter followers for some suggestions for TV shows to watch and Fritz suggested I try a BBC show called Luther. Not having a TV I tend to miss new TV shows but I’ll generally follow a recommendation and so off I went to seek it out and in the space of a few evenings managed to watch all of season 1, just in time to start season 2 that’s just airing now on BBC 1.
What I didn’t realise is that Fritz is a prolific remix guy. As well as Bowie he’s remixed the Beatles, Hate and Hell, and reputedly the most legally downloaded album in the UK, Lily Allen Remixed. Not an album I can ever imagine listening to but obviously I’m in the minority there. Fritz is also responsible for the much more pleasing, to my ears, Renegade Boys which marries the lyrics of The Beastie Boys with the music of Renegade Soundwave. In short, he likes remixing.
This brings me on to the latest project from the von Runte stable, Redesigns. In a project that has echos of Sellaband Fritz is offering limited editions of his newest work in return for donations to the project. £10 gets you a signed and numbered CD, £25 gets you an exclusive t-shirt thrown in with the CD but the real exclusivity comes when you donate a little more. £50 gets your name included in the sleeve notes together with 3 signed copies of the CD and the t-shirt and for a donation of £100 you get not only the t-shirt and 3 signed copies of the CD, with your name in the sleeve notes, you also get an exclusive, one of a kind mixtape CD from Fritz. You tell him what you listen to and he’ll create something just for you. For an idea of what you can expect, have a listen to some of Fritz’s remixes at www.winterhits.com
Redesigns contains versions of Dire Straits’ Why Worry, The Smiths’ Stop Me If You Heard This One Before, The Pet Shop Boys’ Home and Dry plus the much anticipated version Fritz did for Renegade Soundwave’s Biting My Nails and many more. For the full lowdown and to hear some of the tracks head over to Fritz von Runte Redesigns but hurry if you want to donate, there are strictly limited numbers of each package available.
