No Hassle (15th Anniversary Re-issue)(Deluxe Edition)

The lack of releases and exposure from Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister during the 2000s may not have been entirely a bad thing; granted, their early remixes and productions as Kruder & Dorfmeister were landmarks in trip-hop, but if they'd continued on a similar release schedule, they might have gone the way of countless other acts trying (and failing) to avoid the forest-for-the-trees issues that plagued both producers and listeners. Dorfmeister's Tosca project with Rupert Huber remained relatively consistent, although without a full-length of new productions in quite a few years. No Hassle, then, arrived at just the right time. The sound isn't a surprise at all, with watery grooves, soft keyboards, and, early on, an inconstant use of backbeat. Midway through, however, the record finally gets in a few straight-ahead productions (including "Oysters in May"), but with all the immaculate sound and studied arrangements that fans would expect. Dorfmeister and Huber occasionally hark back to the haunted detachment of much classic IDM and trip-hop during the '90s, but as much of the record rests with the smoothest of jazz-fusion from the late '70s and early '80s. Actually a two-disc program, No Hassle includes a full disc of live material, recorded at the Ars Electronica festival. ~ John Bush