Trip-Hop – “Sound of Vienna”: The night that couldn’t end

The first thing you notice is the year of release: 1998. You won’t believe it. These modern electronic sounds are supposed to be 26 years old? Inevitably you start to do the math. Anyone who listened to music that was 26 years old in 1998 ended up in 1972. With glam rock and Philly soul, with art rock and hits. So with songs and sounds that were of their time and just a few years later became a case for nostalgics. The tsunamis called disco and punk took care of that.

The second thing that stands out is the effect. Since Bill Haley’s “Rock around the clock” from 1955, the maxim has been in effect in the kingdom of pop: music has to bang, it has to shake up and stir up. The Sex Pistols have this in common with Lionel Richie and Motörhead have this in common with the Spice Girls. Kruder & Dorfmeister break this iron rule. Her sounds want the opposite: avoidance of emotions. Just no unnecessary excitement. First, cool down, come down.

A case of easy listening? Exactly not. The “gentle waves” (as the music of Bert Kaempfert and Co. has already been described) rush regardless of location or time of day. It makes no difference whether the sound carpet is rolled out in hotel lobbies during the day or in cocktail bars at night. But exactly this criterion does not apply to “The K&D Sessions”, which were recently re-released as a “Limited 25th Anniversary Boxset” in an expensive bonus edition – in the 26th year after publication.

“Intrinsic sound tinkering meets the vampiristic appropriation of international electronic genres such as dub, drum’n’bass, trip-hop, acid jazz and techno,” said Philipp Krohn and Ole Löding in retrospect, describing this new style at the time, which was then marketed as the “Sound of Vienna”. , much to the displeasure of Kruder & Dorfmeister, who then refused to release a follow-up album. Anyone who listens to their remixes at the breakfast table or on the sofa in the evening no longer really understands the fascination that came from these sounds in the late 90s.

This is especially true for people who experienced their nightlife socialization in discos. “Partying” in the 70s and 80s meant getting slowly drunk and then sweating the alcohol out on the dance floor. At some point the limbs grew tired. Then you went home exhausted and fell blissfully into bed.

All that changed in the 90s with techno. Slowly there was nothing here anymore. Ecstasy ensured that the ecstasy began immediately. And lasted. The night should never end. The weekend was too short for sleep. The e-pills made short work of fatigue. Because techno didn’t just mean dancing faster, it also meant living faster.

If your legs became weak after hours of jumping marathon, you just reduced the beat rate. Therefore, chillout sounds are not – as was often claimed at the time – easy listening with electronic means. Rather, they are a place-specific functional music. Chillout is intended to maintain the addictive club feeling for as long as possible. And no one succeeded in this better than Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister from Vienna. They provided the right sound collages for everyone who didn’t want to go home.

But at some point even the longest party comes to an end. After the obligatory encores, the party-loving, carefree 90s said goodbye on September 11, 2001. The ceiling lights came on. The pieces of the night were swept up. And as you made your way into the dawn, you could already tell: the hangover was going to be terrible.

Kruder & Dorfmeister: »The K & D Sessions. Limited 25th Anniversary Boxset« (!K7)