A Quick Q&A with the German Remix Group

GRG is a collective of German musicians. It was founded by CZ-Tunes in 2010 with the initial members Mitch van Hayden and Dr.Future. Our focus is not exclusively on retro remixes: we also do music and soundtracks for games, podcasts, YouTube (videos) and films. We have around 15 members, and before we start a project we ask who has time and motivation to jump in, so every project consists of a slightly different team.

My professional background is in the trades. I didn't have much to do with making music, but it still became a hobby of mine. After a while I also become to know a few musicians/remixers, but not all of them wanted to share their experiences and tips on making music. That's exactly what I wanted to change. The basic idea was to exchange ideas with other musicians and to help each other make music to possibly create something big together. The German Remix Group then emerged from this basic idea. Why I chose the name German Remix Group? My English wasn't good enough to understand all the tips I got from foreign remixers. To make sure that everyone understood each other's language, I decided to use GRG.

As CZ-Tunes and myself have been around the remix scene since 2001, when he approached me in 2010 to form a group, it was a no-brainer for me. Everything makes sense and with the power of a group much more is possible, for example, we have our own booth at the GamesCom expo in Cologne every year.

I first became aware of the retro remix scene in early 2004 through a friend. SLAY Radio became a must-listen at work, and thanks to my musical background, I started producing remixes myself. It’s because of platforms and communities like Remix64 that I quickly connected with other German remixers and made friends along the way. One of those friends was— and still is — CZ-Tunes, who quickly got me excited about the idea of the GRG. Whether it’s pigeon breeding or a sports club, we Germans somehow always have the urge to come together in communities. Probably because we know that together we can achieve more.

That’s a longer story. In early 2025 a guy contacted me who was doing a port of Wings of Death for the Atari Jaguar, together with the original coder Marc Rosocha, and asked for permission to use my 20 years old remixes. The Jaguar port was very clever, if the system detected a CD in the drive, it was able to play the audio (tracks) from that disc.

Anyway, that was the moment when I thought it was about time to do a new remix of a Wings of Death track I haven’t done before. But when working on that track, I thought, so many physical releases from Hülsbeck, but not a single one from Hippel (besides his Give it a try back in the days). As in my opinion Wings of Death is his masterpiece, I thought this is it, we must try to do something with this. Because physical releases are an expensive task, crowdfunding was the only possible option. It was totally clear to me that that’s a project too big for me alone, so I contacted CZ-Tunes and Mitch (maybe I was hoping they'll say forget it you crazy chicken, but it took only seconds to hear them say: Let’s do it!).

As I already wrote above, Wings of Death is Hippel’s Magnum Opus, IMHO. Remember the title track – that’s 7 voices! Awesome. He invented the technique Hülsbeck then developed for Turrican 2. And the ingame tracks are awesome as well. Because one channel is dedicated to Sound FX, only 3 voices are left for the music, but it’s a hell of a soundtrack – powerful, melodic, motivating, innovative. So we decided to do all tracks of the game, the Thalion Loader tune and one unused track Hippel wrote for the game (Atari ST) but didn’t use. Besides these modern remakes, the GRG members will also do a whole bunch of creative remixes. And to make the package even fuller, we decided to remaster all the original Amiga tracks and add them to the campaign, too.

To give one of Germany’s most respected and creative musicians of the 16-bit era a musical monument. And to give his fans the chance to have all that new music on a beautiful vinyl or double-CD. Not to forget the poster, patch, and mousepad. 😉 We really want these tracks to be the top of our game. Since this album is a celebration to Jochen, for us it had to be nothing less than the best we could do.