Kruder & Dorfmeister — G-Stoned. Story behind first release and creation of eponymous label (2024)

“We just smoked all day long and planned tocontinue, but soon wegot bored andstarted making music,” jokes RichardDorfmeister openly.

Hispartner, PeterKruder, talks about hismemories alittle bit more seriously. “Imet Richard in1991. PeterRauhofer (the first Viennese house musician) wasworking ontheDanube Dance compilation with the guys from theViennese electronic scene. I offered a track, recorded with friends. Weworked inthestudio before thememory of our sampler gotbroken. Andsomeone advisedus totalk toRichard because hehad thesame. Weworked inour studio andinvited him toplay theflute onacouple ofour tracks. Mypath and theband’s soon separated butIkept intouch with Richard. Hewent toLondon forayear atthat time, and Ihad agreat offer towork inLosAngeles asahairdresser with PeterSavic. Thisstylist wasareal icon atthetime; hewas theone whomade Madonna blonde. And Iwas afree person atthetime and Iearned decent money inVienna—athousand shillings aday (around 93$ according tothe rate atthat time). SoIcould work foronly fourdays andspend therest ofmytime making music.

And this was whenI saw aphoto ofSimon &Garfunkel’s Bookends, andIremember being extremely surprised tosee that Richard looked somuch like ArtGarfunkel. Imade acopy ofthecover, sent ittoLondon, andwrote: Weneed torecord analbum with acover like this because you’re the one onthe right.

Richard called and said hedidn’t like itthat much inLondon, soIsaid: Great. Pack your stuff andgohome. Intwodays, Richard stood atthe threshold ofmyhouse and hisPeugeot was nearby with the music equipment. Webuilt astudio right there onGrudsteingasse and started writing music.”

IntheUK, Dorfmeister was working asasound engineer atradio stations when heheard thehit album Blue Lines byMassive Attack that had just been released. Having come back toAustria, he,together with Kruder, recorded amini album with atriphop sound. But itwasn’t theBristol hopelessness—it was thelight sadness ofone street inVienna because inAustria (now ahashed stereotype repeated inevery interview), which was always only associated with Mozart andSchubert and where almost every child receives musical education, itwas unheardof. Itwas unheard ofmaking arecord not full ofcrackling sounds butrather lazy and slow rhythms reminiscent ofablissful life, with the warm sounds ofaFender electric organ, recalling ajazz night. Thisis themood ofdrug dealers, notgentle but satisfied, which isimplied bythe name G-Stoned—Ganja Stoned. Theduo jokes that their first cooperation wasselling joints toeach other.

Peter Kruder: “Wethought alot about what toname ourselves. Ihad anickname from the time ofmyhip hop band, PM2The K. Richard had the name Dr. Richard, which was the name ofabus company inVienna. And this iswhenI thought about Simon and Garfunkel’s cover and suggested the name Kruder &Dorfmeister. Richard didn’t support meatfirst, since atthe time noone took such names.”

They spent almost anentire day recreating thefamous photo oftheAmerican folk duo inorder tocapture similar shades, light, sweaters andappearance. “Ilove this album,” says Dorfmeister. “This ismyfavourite record bySimon andGarfunkel. Everytime Igo tothe USIbring myself onemore copy, it’s very easy tofind itthere. But theinteresting thing isthat they arealways really different: sometimes the colour differs abit, sometimes thepaper.” Perfectionism was thepriority when they founded their label; they decided toself-release because they were inthe middle ofnowhere. “Our street, Grudsteingasse (Cornerstone), gave thename toour label, G-Stone. This iswhere Peter’s house was andsoon itbecame our headquarters,” continues Dorfmeister. “Ithad tworooms: abedroom and ahall. Welived inthe studio atthe time. And our day looked like this: wewokeup, went totheother room, ifyou can call itaroom because itwas anawful mix ofpersonal stuff and equipment—what arecalled bedroom rockers. For this reason, wenamed one ofour albums like this.”

The record ofthis duo isperhaps thebiggest confession oflove toexperimental albums byMilesDavis, thegreat trumpet player andjazzman. “The coolest thing”, Dorfmeister later recalled about G-Stoned, “isthat werecorded this album afterall. Wewrote music forages with minimal equipment, knowing almost nothing, butit*till sounds amazing.”

This isstrange because they said that jazz wasn’t really popular inAustria atthe time. Later, when itall worked out, there was awave ofmusical releases andanarrow musical circle turned into thelounge scene ofVienna, butbefore this, allthat Dorfmeister andKruder heard was “Forget it! It’s not worthit.” Atthe same time, itisn’t like Austria wasn’t familiar with electronic music—German techno was everywhere aswell asthe echo ofDutch hardcore. Germany isadjacent toAustria, inthe South-East. Even from Vienna toMunich it’s only 400km—four and halfhours ofdriving onthe autobahn, and itgoes without saying for theplaces near the border: twonations but onelanguage, sothere are noproblems with communication. And even though theduo thinks that techno isfine, it’s still abit cold for them, although, theyadd, there areexceptions. Kruder andDorfmeister arelooking towards another North, another country—British labels such asMo’Wax, NinjaTune, Wall ofSound with the sound close tojazz with elements ofLatin rhythms, which they were brought upon.

“Wewere always insearch forsamples”, recalls Dorfmeister. “Inour city there was ashop with used vinyls, owned byanAmerican. And hehad agreat collection, every kind ofgem. Ioften hungout there with arecorder forhours and recorded things weincluded inour tracks”. Kruder agrees: “Isampled all thevinyl collections ofmyfriends. Thiswas avery good idea, very productive.

Wehad nomoney tobuy them—all themoney wehad went torelease thefirst record bythe G-Stone label. Athousand copies, thiswas theminimal order. Weworked inaplace called Viennola then. Afamous Frau Brüggemann worked there, sheprepared records forcutting. Butour test press forsome reason didn’t sound theway weexpected. When weasked: Sorry Mrs.Brüggemann, whydoes our record sound sosh*tty?, sheanswered: Because mydear mister, Iput itthrough thecompressor andthehigh frequencies disappeared. Ofcourse, Ican turn themup, butnormally Idon’t dothat. Shemade thesecond test press and itsounded amazing.”

The first promos were distributed among acquaintances andmusical shops owners. “They startledme,” said AlexanderHirschenhauser, theowner ofafunk and jazz music shop.

Heconvinced Kruder and Dorfmeister toaim atthe international market and use hisconnections torelease thealbum inGermany, theUK and theUS. Before pressing therecords, Hirschenhauser sent acassette toGillesPeterson, theone whocoined thesurreal term acid jazz andpromoted thissound intheUK inthe90s. Thesame cassette wasgiven tohim inFlorence byDorfmeister’s girlfriend. “But Iwas soobnoxious back then, Ididn’t even listen tothe cassette. Like, what kind ofmusic canAustrians have? (laughs) And itwas like this before KevinBiddle showed meHigh Noon (theone where ElvisPresley sings Blue Moon) inhis shop andIwas amazed because itsounded sofresh: ithad this thick sound which wastypical ofhiphop producers only. (Itisn’t surprising—Peter was apart ofthe rap scene atsome point.) This was the record wewere waitingfor and itbecame atrue catalyst ofeverything that wascalled the triphop scene atthetime.”

Peterson was excited andplayed therecord regularly during hisshow onthe pirate station KissFM, spreading itamong all his acquaintances and finding newlisteners. The UKwas thefirst country toappreciate the young Austrians. “Twoweeks after therelease ofour record, Richard called meand said Doyou want toprint more records? We’ve already sold thewhole thousand.” AndIthen thought Wow, wemadeit! Thiswas aninexpressible feeling,” says Peter with asmile.