WHO IS DER TANTE RENATE?

Der Tante Renate's live shows combine a variety of music styles into a highly energetic hybrid musical experience, with basslines making it suitable for dancefloors of all sizes. Having played at music festivals like Fusion, Juicy Beats and Eurosonic it is about time for "der Tante Renate" to step forward and reveal some secrets. We dropped some questions to get us some clues.

Who is der Tante Renate?
"That's very simple. It's my artist name. No, it's some kind of gender mash-up to confuse people over here in Germany. They usually expect a female artist or something very weird when they hear the name. I've been using the pseudonym for maybe 10 years or so. It was made up when some friends of mine and myself started creating music with our Amigas. We considered the strangest name to be best and I chose "Der Tante Renate" because "Tante Renate" (auntie Renate) sounds completely awful. It's like an old peoples name. And "der" because I'm male (correct German language is "Die Tante Renate"). These two things mixed together is my artist name. Weird, isn't it?"

Can you tell how it all began?
"I never really started "der Tante Renate" but it developed somehow. When my interest in music started, I already had a computer but was not able to create music with it and I was just a game freak. That changed when I bought my first guitar in the early nineties and at almost the same time these tracker programs came up and offered an immense amount of cool possibilities to produce music.

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