Everything started in the Original BedroomRockers Studio.

Kruder & Dorfmeister’s story is not just a story of refusal and renunciation. As the two started making music together in the early 1990s, there was hardly anything that they didn’t do “wrong” — and therefore, exactly right.

At the time, Vienna was a metropolis of the aspiring techno movement and active during the initial heyday of the revolutionary style. But K&D followed instead the tradition of the continental cosmic dancefloor of the 1980s, which searched for a universal language of dance music influenced by hip hop, rare groove, dub, new wave, and music that stood out between those categories.

As the first post-acid jazz productions of labels like Ninja Tune or Mo Wax heralded a new era, Kruder & Dorfmeister were already a step ahead. The sound of K&D’s groundbreaking debut G-Stoned, influenced by the elegiac arrangements of 1960s and 1970s Afro-jazz and Pink Floyd, left many top producers wondering how such an organically flowing, complex yet subtle sound could be generated with only two Akai samplers, a Roland Space Delay, and a dusty mixer.

Offers came pouring in like heavy rainfall in midsummer, but the two stubborn gentlemen didn’t play along. After the success of their DJ-Kicks and Sessions CDs — which sold millions worldwide — they turned down most major offers.

K&D preferred to avoid the promises of full-speed marketing machinery. Instead, they supported musician friends through their G-Stone label, worked in the studio, and developed follow-up projects such as Dorfmeister & Huber’s Tosca and Kruder’s Peace Orchestra.

Anyone who heard them DJ during that time noticed that the cliché of smoky time-loop jazz had long been left behind. Their sets evolved through drum & bass, broken beat, straight 4/4 rhythms, and a roughened-up Balearic sunset vibe.

To this day, they maintain an open concept influenced by wide-ranging musical tastes and an ability to deeply hear and feel music. Their career is often compared to that of Brian Eno — from Roxy Music and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts to collaborations with David Bowie and Music for Airports — guided by a visionary, genre-transcending understanding of music.

From the beginning, their goal was to produce a highly personalized sound where genre boundaries were secondary. Peter Kruder demonstrated this through productions such as DJ Hell’s Teufelswerk and Zukunftsmusik, Marsmobil’s chart-topping Fairytales Of The Supersurvivor, and releases under his own name for Compost, Macro, and Gigolo Records. Dorfmeister’s Tosca project, with its ceaselessly minimalist, almost dadaist tonal studies, and collaborations on The Exchange, further cemented that direction.

Kruder & Dorfmeister are happiest when their music and DJ sets are taken for what they are: odes to hearing, feeling, and sensing tonal language — music that functions not like spoken language, but like body language: universal, global, unifying.

In 2017, K&D received the Golden Medal of Honour for Services to the State of Vienna.

From 2017 to 2024, they performed more than 250 sold-out audio-visual shows worldwide.

Performing the K&D Sessions live with a band is their newest adventure — the two premiere shows at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie are already legendary.

In 2025, K&D will tour the world with K&D Sessions Live.