Kruder & Dorfmeister - DJ Kicks

One of the most recognizable and endlessly replayable mix albums ever assembled, and thirty years on still the definitive introduction to the Vienna duo who helped define what downtempo and trip-hop could sound like at their most cinematic and refined. Released in August 1996 on Studio !K7 as part of the celebrated DJ-Kicks series, Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister's contribution became one of the most beloved entries in that storied catalog and a document of a very particular late-night mood that has never been bettered.

By 1996 Kruder and Dorfmeister had already earned an extraordinary reputation despite a remarkably slim discography of their own, their remixes for Bomb The Bass, Alex Reece, United Future Organization, and others circulating among serious listeners as landmark examples of what slo-beat production could achieve. Here, curating and mixing tracks from Ninja Tune, Moving Shadow, ESL, and G-Stone alongside peers and kindred spirits, they demonstrate why those remixes caused such a stir. The Herbaliser's "A Mother" opens with immediately, Small World, Omni Trio, Thievery Corporation, Hardfloor, JMJ and Flytronix, Beanfield, and Shantel move through the mix with a seamless, unhurried confidence, and K&D's own "High Noon," with Dorfmeister's intoxicating jazz flute and trembling harmonica atop a mirage of breaks, and the closing original "Black Baby" provide the two moments of grandeur that anchor the whole thing.

As one longtime listener put it, the mix has that rare quality of sounding like something that has always existed. Curation and mixing at its most playful and refined, retaining a certified cinematic sheen that has never faded.