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History
1998


The reinvigoration of Frostbyte Records was complete on the 13th March, 1998, when the label launched its popular monthly 'Frostbitten' club nights at the Blue Lagoon venue in the Hilsea Lido, at the northern end of Portsea Island.  The resident DJ was Andrew Morrison, and he has since established the night as essential for local club goers, by playing rare mixes and forthcoming unreleased tracks from Frostbyte Record's catalogue.  On the sell out opening night, Fußgängerzone played a short live set to celebrate.  This has gone down in the annals of history as one of their best performances.  The reasonably small crowd filling the club were, in Birgitte's words "absolutely out for the cup" and there was an intimate yet enthusiastic atmosphere permeating the whole night, with many Frostbyte stars attending the evening (which, against local bylaws, didn't finish until 4:30am). Fußgängerzone’s much talked about set was:

'Fußgängerzone Are Back'
'The Dog Sh*t Shoe Song'
'Cockney Wanker'
'I Love The Mafia'
- a new track still in its embyrionic form, which the band had only just written, that went down a storm!
The band were joined onstage by counterparts The Celestial Anthropoids to perform Gin & Tonic's '00E - Licenced To Rave' as the encore, which made the clubbers go ballistic!


(Big Bat Fat Cat Benjamin outside his beloved Blue Lagoon, venue for the popular 'Frostbitten' monthly club nights.)


The administration and running of the 'Frostbitten' nights took up much of the record label's resources and manpower during 1998, and as a result very little music was released.  Because of the high black market price of copies of No One Knows We're Dead & The Saint's 'The Return Of The Saint' EP, and with demand exceeding supply, it was decided that a limited edition album album release should be made. 'The Return Of the Saint - Special Edition' came out on the 7th December, marking Frostbyte's first release of 1998, and featured all the original EP tracks, as well as new remixes and old archive material.  The album was deleted a week after release, with some 15,000 copies being put into circulation.

Encouraged by the great reaction to 'I Love The Mafia' at the debut club night, Fußgängerzone had a brief summer recording session (their last at Viewpoint Studios, as within weeks they were to open their own tailor-made "F-Studio" suite on the same site as Viewpoint; which was to become the most technically advanced recording studio in Europe). This resulted in the release - on December 14th - of 'I Love The Mafia' as a double A sided single with the song 'Now, That's What I Call Fußgängerzone' (which itself had premiered some weeks before as an acetate at 'Frostbitten', having an unprecedented positive response from the crowd to its heavy dance beats, "Stingray" samples, and additional vocals by Ludwig's mother).

1997 1999

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