Music
7 things you should know about Kruder & Dorfmeister
The Vienna duo are back performing together 25 years after their breakthrough EP G-Stoned and they headline the Red Bull Music Academy Festival Vienna in May. Here's what you should know about them.
When Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister got together for their debut EP G-Stoned in 1993, featuring the still fresh sounding High Noon, the two Vienna producers and DJs helped define the post-rave sound of the '90s with their mellow blend of deep and dubby bass, soft breaks and hip-hop beats, and epic, downtempo soundscapes. Their 1996 DJ-Kicks mix for !K7 Records remains one of the series’ high watermarks, while their own album, The K & D Sessions, was one of the '90s biggest-selling electronic albums. Big-hitters such as Madonna, Depeche Mode and Roni Size have all benefitted from the duo's remix wizardry.
Twenty-five years after the release of G-Stoned, the duo are heading up the bill at Red Bull Music Academy Festival Vienna on 9 May. Before then, here's what you should know about the Austrian duo.
Kruder & Dorfmeister owe it all to Simon & Garfunkel
After a few dalliances with other musicians, it was the front cover of Simon & Garfunkel's classic 1968 album Bookends that first got the duo making music together.
"I came across Bookends and found that Richard totally looks like Art Garfunkel," Peter Kruder told Groove. "I then scanned the cover and sent it to London, with the inscription: 'We have to make a record just to copy this cover. Because you look like that guy.' Three days later, he was standing at my door, his Peugeot packed to the brim with equipment. We then built this up in my apartment in the Grundsteingasse and started making music."
Richard Dorfmeister still believes they lucked out
The duo recorded their 1993 debut EP G-Stoned in Kruder's Grundsteingasse apartment. The EP features a track called Original Bedroom Rockers in tribute to their recording set-up. After it was picked up by Gilles Peterson, the duo were propelled into the big time. But they didn't have any great plans for stardom.
"We jumped into the scene without any warning – it was great," Richard Dorfmeister told Mixmag. "We didn't do it to become professionals, we were just doing it to have a good time. Our DJing was a bit of a joke, in a way, and then the !K7 album turned over a lot of units. It was at a time when the music business was working – compared to now. We came into the music business at a good time, before the whole mp3 thing came in."
They only released their massive-selling K & D Sessions because of a misinformed journalist
After their 1996 DJ-Kicks compilation blew up, the duo climbed the next peak with their acclaimed 1998 album The K & D Sessions, a collection of past remixes and a few of their own productions. It reportedly sold around two million copies and – so goes the saying – in the late '90s everyone had an IKEA Billy bookshelf and The K & D Sessions album.
“We played in Munich at a party in the Muffathalle," explains Kruder. "After that, we had an interview and the journalist said, 'I don't understand the hype, you didn't do it all yourself except this first EP.' This statement was insane because at the time we had 40 remixes out around the world. On the way back to Vienna, we decided to put together a compilation for the last four years, so that people could check what we'd done. The result was The K & D Sessions. Our DJ-Kicks had sold about 60,000 at this time. We expected a little more from The K & D Sessions, but not the madness it started."
Peter Kruder’s first band worked with Falco
Kruder’s teenage band The Moreaus were invited to appear in the video for Falco’s Wiener Blut, released after the Austrian had already rocketed to worldwide superstardom with Rock Me Amadeus.
"By that point he was already beyond cool or uncool," Kruder told Red Bull Music Academy in 2017. "He was a global star. I had complete respect for that. My band actually appeared in his music video Wiener Blut – wearing outfits made of plastic bags from Billa [an Austrian supermarket]. Unfortunately the video shoot happened without me. I was working as a hairdresser at the time and I couldn’t get the day off."
Kruder has a lot of respect for Falco's achievements
A few years before the tragic 1996 car crash that killed Falco, Kruder & Dorfmeister met up with the Austrian pop legend to discuss collaborating. It didn’t come to anything, but Falco did give the duo a few bits of advice, telling them to leave Austria to avoid paying so much tax. They didn't follow that particular piece of wisdom, but Kruder remains fond of him.
"What set him apart was the way he transferred elements from the wider world of pop into his own world," Kruder told Red Bull Music Academy. "He took the New York pimp and created the Vienna Strizzi. He did it with such intelligence and humour that everyone bought into it. For those in the know, it was because they understood the references. For those who weren’t, it was because he was the first guy who brought hip-hop into their world.”
Kruder & Dorfmeister refused to sign to a major label
By steering clear of the majors, the duo were able to take things at their own pace and concentrate on refining their DJing, remixing and production chops rather than getting stuck on the album-tour-album-tour treadmill.
"We were even in fierce talks with Island Records," Kruder told Groove. "But we knew we didn't want to work with the major labels. With our remixes, we got a lot of promotion from the record companies and got paid anyway. Gilles [Peterson] was after us as well, but years later he told me it was smart to stay independent. If we had signed to his label, we would've had to do three albums in three years and never had the time to build our name with DJ gigs and remixes."
Kruder & Dorfmeister turned down a chance to remix David Bowie
It's the pair’s mixes and remixes that really made them stars in the '90s. They left their mark on songs by some big names, including Madonna and Depeche Mode. But also turned down requests, too, from Sade and – gasp – David Bowie.
"We simply didn’t like the song," Kruder told Red Bull Music Academy. "Looking back on it, this default mode of turning things down was very important for our career. Many of our underground peers were seduced by the industry – and they soon discovered that compromising would only bring them short-term success. We always had an aversion to how the whole industry worked. Just like Falco did. When MTV wanted to do an interview with him, apparently he said: 'Fine, they can come to me.' I thought that was extremely cool. He stood for this typical Viennese way of being: oscillating between depression and megalomania."