But it’s been a while since Kruder and Dorfmeister made a record together. For the past few years, the latter has been concentrating on his work with former Viennese school buddy Rupert Hubert. Recording as Tosca, the pair first popped up on the radar with ‘Chocolate Elvis’ in 1994. And since then, they’ve been releasing lazy, leftfield music with reassuring, relaxed regularity. Bodytonic spoke to Richard about the new album ‘No Hassle’, becoming a father, being branded as godfather of the Balearic scene... and, predictably, the whereabouts of any new K+D music.

‘No Hassle’ – is this the way to live your life?

Well you could say so. Actually, the intention was to generate one hour of absolute freedom and peace of mind - something that is so rare nowadays. Everybody is pressured by their daily life that it has become so hard to just have some hassle-free moments - that is what you should feel while listening to the album. In other words, ‘No Hassle’ is about clarity of perception and acting instead of judging...

It has been four years since you made ‘JAC’ – were you working on ‘No Hassle’ since then, or did you take time off?

The last four years we focused on this special album. We just tried to get away from the song structure thing from the last two albums and get back to the roots in terms of style - less vocals, more found sounds. A bit like we did with the ‘Suzuki’ album but with a more modern approach...

The last time I interviewed you, I think that you both just had children. How has this affected your lives, and your music?

It’s the most challenging thing that can happen to you. You learn to appreciate life much more though it can be rough sometimes because you have to deal with another kind of time management. But it’s a big inspiration and in the words of Lou Reed: ‘A great adventure’.

Apart from the title, what is the theme to the new album, what was the inspiration for making the music?

The first track we did for the album was the title track and this idea of going more into the ambient direction led us through the production process... just an album we really could listen to again and again.

How does it work in the studio, who does what?

We both play all the instruments ourselves. We do the mixing as well in our studio. So we have full control of the creative process - pure luxury!

And where does an idea begin and end?

That could be anything. Sometimes a good start is to get a new instrument into the studio. For instance, Rupert brought a real harp with him - so it was good fun to play around with this instrument. Or sometimes we jam around a rhythm and let the ideas flow. It’s magic - whenever we meet we always get some kind of useful result...

What do you hope for from this album? Is success important to you both?

It’s more about the music than the fame - we want to spread the music as far as possible...

In broader terms, quite a bit has changed since your last record… The press release suggests Tosca is one of the godfathers of the nu-disco scene. How do you feel about this?

Nu-disco is not exactly the style we feel responsible for - I think what we do is more of an unique sound, whatever tag it has. (Here’s a) better tag: run to the corner and comb your hair again (Frank Zappa).

What do you think of Studio, A Mountain Of One and all the modern Balearic movement? Do you feel part of it? Or does it pass you by?

That has no real impact on our sound...

Do you have ambitions to tour this album?

Last year, we had a performance at the Ars Electronica festival, where we did Tosca as a live thing, with visuals, piano and dubs in a church. It went down quite well - so we decided to set up more dates this year in this vain. We are looking forward to doing this because it’s a new and exciting way to display our sound...

Richard, is Tosca still your side-project from Kruder and Dorfmeister, or is this now your ‘main’ project, your ‘day job’?

Not sure. At the moment I invest a lot of time and effort to release it in a good way. I just want to get it out right.

Will we see a new series of K+D records?

There will be an exclusive track by K+D that will be available from the G-stone recordings website: http://www.g-stoned.com - nice track that is!

‘No Hassle’ is out on K7 in April.

http://www.g-stoned.com