Vienna's Kruder and Dorfmeister are two of the best respected producers of downbeat grooves in the dance world. With their excellent DJ Kicks compilation about to land on bedroom stereos any time now Joanne Wain thought she'd ask what records they got their life changing kicks from.
Pink Floyd - The Wall (Harvest)
At school we had some very nice lady teachers who taught us English. They played
us 'The Wall' and I was completely turned on by it for 2 months, day and night.
I went completely crazy about it. I lost it so much that I really wanted to
learn English so that I could understand what they were saying. After that I
started going through all the back catalogue of Pink Floyd. I've got every record
and I'm still a big fan. I still listen to 'Wish You Were Here'. It encouraged
me to make things spacey and vague. Back then listening to this was like being
on drugs.
A Tribe Called Quest - People's Instinctive Travels and The Path of Rhythm
(Jive/Bomba)
This album was highly rated because I had got into sampling big time about two
years earlier. A Tribe Called Quest was good for me because it started opening
my mind to everything. Back then there wasn't any of this hardcore, keeping
it real shit. It was more like sample whatever you find and make something good
out of it, which is my basic approach for working. At the time I was working
as a freelance hairdresser doing stuff for magazines and commercials, but I
was always into music.
Sly & The Family Stone - There's A Riot Goin' On (CBS)
Sly Stone is an incredible character and an incredible musician who's also self
taught. I read that he used to compose with live musicians. He would sit in
a room and have people playing as he was writing which reminds me in an abstract
way of sampling. Sly is great and any musician that writes a song called 'Thank
You For Letting Me Be Myself' is just... I mean I would love to do something
like this, but I think I have to grow much older. I first got into him with
the album 'Fresh', then I went back through all the other stuff. It's incredible:
the music, the singing, what he said. I got into this in '91 shortly after A
Tribe Called Quest because I really liked all the sounds that they used and
they sampled a lot of Sly Stone.
Antonio Carlos Jobim - Wave (A&M/CTI)
He did all kinds of stuff like for Frank Sinatra for example. He was a true
genius. He died a year ago actually. I got into him through my mum. She always
used to listen to Brazilian and Latin music and by chance I was at her apartment
and she played me this CD. People will call it easy listening but it's not.
It's easy to listen to but it's also very deep if you get in further. You get
influenced by your parents but you don't realise until much later. I never really
appreciated the music my mum played me until now. I first heard this in 1993
but no doubt I'd heard it a long time before through my mother without recognising
it. It has incredible string arrangements in the back, it's soft music but still
has very fast beats like Latin/Brazilian grooves. At the moment I'm working
on a tribute to him.
Brian Eno/David Byrne - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (EG)
Brian Eno influenced my sampling. I also know this by heart and I still listen
to it. It's a very important record because it was the first to combine different
elements from different cultures with modern rhythms, short wave radio and voices.
It was way ahead of its time. This must have been about 1985. At the time I
was making music in school with a friend of mine, Rupert, who I have my Tosca
project with now on our G-Stone label. We were doing tracks then but they weren't
very good! After hearing this I started buying more electronic equipment because
it was impossible to create this sort of music with real instruments.
Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends (CBS)
This is where the cover of our G-Stone EP comes from. I heard this first at
my uncle's place and was extremely affected by the feeling of the record. I
really fell in love with it but never realised that twelve years later what
affect it would have. Peter realised how similar we looked to Simon and Garfunkel
so we decided as a joke that we would recreate the cover. I can't choose one
of the record off this album that I particularly like because I love all of
them. 'Bookends' reminds me of when I was 16 or 17, I didn't have a direction
but felt that music was very important.
Miles Davis - Agartha / Get Up With It.
These are both in the same vein. It's very heavy music. I was experimenting
substances, finding out how it affects you and what high you can get with certain
ones. It was the same with the music, checking out different styles and seeing
what agrees with you. This was a really heavy time for Miles Davis in the mid
'70s, he was doing tracks which would last a whole album. He was a deep influence
whereas Jobim and Garfunkel are somehow easy music.
Horace Andy - Dance Hall Style (Wackie)
That whole dub thing I heard much later. In Austria you couldn't get any real
good dub reggae, it just wasn't around, not like in London where you can buy
old 45s. I was introduced to this type of music through Kiss FM four of five
years ago when I was living in London making music and just hanging out and
absorbing the city. It was the year before I started with Peter. This record
is one of the best dub records ever made. It's quite heavily already used and
abused by Massive Attack music-wise and sample-wise, and it's been a very big
influence on our music. It reminds me of recording off the radio 'Money Money
Money - The Route of All Evil' which is still a topic that's up to date, in
terms of not being seduced by the whole money thing.