He’s long been known as one half of the chilled-out electronic duo Kruder & Dorfmeister, but this Austrian DJ is accomplished in his own right. Ahead of his gig at Kee, Peter Kruder sheds light on why he’s back in Hong Kong and what he considers to be ‘perfect music’

On the early days When I first started out in ’86 or something like that, you played everything back then… you played funk and soul and disco and hip-hop and new wave, and whatever was there − whatever was kind of good. You mixed up everything.

On what life would have been like without Richard Dorfmeister I really don’t think about it, but it would be different. I’m pretty sure I would still make music. You never know what would have come out but I’m pretty happy that we met. We both are.

On how he differs from Dorfmeister I don’t look back so much. I’m more like ‘I did it already so I don’t want to do it again’. [Dorfmeister] is not living in the past but he’s not that ambitious to look into the future. He’s a father. He has three children now. I don’t have children. He has a family life. I have a life of an artist, so to speak.

On the Kruder & Dorfmeister remixes There’s really no formula. The only goal is to make it really different from the original. It’s more about making a proper song out of the original version. There were a couple of times where we just said ‘this is perfect music, you can’t make it any better’, so we just didn’t do the mix.

On what K&D consider to be ‘perfect music’ There was Air − an EP, one of their first 10-inches. I think it was called Casanova 70. They offered it to see if we wanted to do a remix. We said it was perfect. We couldn’t do it any better.

On Asia’s DJ culture It’s similar [to Europe]. Nowadays there’s not too much difference between cities and the clubs and the music they play. There used to be a much bigger difference when people still played vinyl because every city had a certain shop and a certain selection of vinyl where DJs picked their stuff. So everywhere you went there was a little bit of a different sound running. Nowadays, with the internet, it’s pretty much the same everywhere.

On the cake-fight photo The idea for the cake-fight came when we did the anniversary compilation for our label [G-Stone Recordings]. We had all the other acts on the label, everybody, involved and we ordered about a hundred cakes. Then we just threw them in our faces, and took pictures while doing this. It was a really fun afternoon. It’s rather funny when people our age become like little children, throwing cakes at each other [note: Kruder is 44]. It was for the compilation called Sixteen F**king Years of G-Stone and there’s a booklet and you see every artist, with more or less a cake in their face, somewhere.

On his side projects VoomVoom is a project with Christian Prommer and Roland Appel. They used to have a project called Fauna Flash, and we have been long, long friends. We talked a lot about equipment in the studio because we were collecting gear, like EQs and compressors and all that stuff. We always talked about it, and then one day we said why don’t we do something with all those tools. Peace Orchestra is really me alone, but I’m working on a follow-up and now I invite a lot more musicians to it, and just let people in the studio, and we play.

On collaborations I like to collaborate in the studio. It’s just more fun than to sit alone. I can make music on my own, that’s no problem. But it’s much nicer to share something, to share an experience, to share a moment when something incredible happens in the studio. If you’re on your own, you just talk to yourself, which gets boring after a while.

On Hong Kong This is probably the fifth or sixth time I’ll play at Kee… I really like Kee Club – the crowd is amazing. I love Hong Kong. I think it’s one of my favourite cities in the world because it’s so mixed with old and new and future and past. The first time I was there it must have been like five or six years ago. When I saw Hong Kong, I thought it was the perfect city for Batman. And, funnily enough, the next year they shot Batman there.

On the tracks we’ll hear in his upcoming gig I cannot tell.... when I play, I play for the moment and what is happening. I need to stand there and play. Then I choose my music. I don’t choose my music in advance. I just know what music I have with me and then I play a selection right on the spot.

Interview: Dan Kadison and Andrea Yu

KEE Club Friday 11, $300 keeclub.com