Frankfurt based Award winning DJ, Producer, and Label owner at CLR Recordings Chris Liebing has just celebrated the 10-year anniversary of his label accompanied by tour dates including stops in the Europe, South America, and extremely long awaited performances in the United States.

He has some interesting collaborations in the works and well some interesting new improvements at CLR Recordings including a change in his distribution among other information that he would like to share with us.

Keep reading to find out some interesting highlights he spoke about at few of his recent performances while on tour in the United States.

Greetings Chris! How are you?
I am doing well, how are you.

I'm doing well.
First and foremost I would like to wish a Happy 10th Anniversary to your successful record label.

Thank you very much.

What are some of the new developments at CLR Recordings?
After 10 years of releasing an average of around three records a year I felt I needed to take a step forward with push the music that I enjoy when I DJ. I never really had the time to take care of that. After 10 years I decided to get a brand new label manager; a professional one so that more work could get done. We hired additional people in the office. It's really interesting what is happening at the moment. I've discovered a whole new generation of producers that are into that driving techno sound that I am into at the moment. Of course I am producing it myself and I am playing it. I noticed over the last years there wasn't much music around that I was able to play, so I started looking and I found some and I got some more people involved so that is the major change. It's been really nice so far.

You recently celebrated the 10-year anniversary of your record label CLR. In what ways has the label progressed over the years?
When I initially started it was sort of a platform just for myself to release my music and music of some producer friends, so we wouldn't have to go through the hassle of trying to find labels. I thought it was easier to have my own label and to have complete control over what I release. That is why I didn't have very many releases. It stayed that way for the first 7 or 8 years. Then I started to expand and behave like an actual label owner in regards to telling people when to release something. My plan is to make the label a bit broader in the spectrum so I get to release my own music and I get to DJ as well and I think that is where the progress comes in.

Your 10-year anniversary event took place at Club Cielo in New York. What did you think of Cielo and their acclaimed sound system?
I played there for the second time. I played there a year and a half ago for a party called Robots, which was a party series run by Nick AC over quite some years in New York. May be you have heard about it?

Actually yes I have, but I don't think they are doing parties here anymore.
No, they aren't doing parties anymore. Nick actually moved to London and he still sometimes works on music. I still stay in contact with him. He is actually the godfather of my daughter. It's always been a lot of fun to work with him. I never actually got to play at the Robots parties but then for his final farewell event when he was due to move back to Europe they celebrated at Cielo and I got to play there with Joris Voorn for the first time. I was already amazed by the location because I really like that space. I like the centered dance floor, and the square room around it just for people to hang out in a good vibe to good music and dance. There is a really good sound system so I really enjoyed it the first time and I also enjoyed it two weeks ago.

They actually upgraded their sound system just before your performance.
Yes, that is true. There was a guy from Funktion One on site fine-tuning the system as I was playing and I was heavily in discussion with him the whole time like “How about some mids here and some highs there, and what about the bass?” it was really interesting.

The day after your performance at Cielo you played the Droid Behavior event in Los Angeles for their 7-year anniversary. What were the highlights of the event?
That was an absolutely fantastic event! If I sum that up for you not it's probably like a fifteen minute story…really long story. I don't know if you've heard about this but the Fire Department actually shut them down.

No, I didn't hear about that!
Yes, it's crazy. I only knew Moe from his productions Audio Injection, Drumcell, and Droid the label. I got into contact with him a year ago and asked for a remix of one of my tracks which he has already completed and it will be released on my label but I have never actually met him in person. When I got to LA a friend of Moe's picks me up and on the way to the hotel he starts telling me they have been doing these Droid events for seven years. Last time I was in LA was nine years ago so I completely missed it all that time. They built up the scene and they do it in illegal warehouses in downtown LA. I asked if they had ever got busted and he told me “No it's never a problem, so are pretty safe”. Well I replied that I hope it's not going to be happening tonight. That night they basically got busted. The Fire Department came by because there were way too many people.

You jinxed them, haha!
It was crazy, it was amazing to see because the party was already going on from ten o'clock and this was a bit after one so I already got a chance to see what was going on at the party and there was really good music playing, and a really good sound system and visuals which they always do in their productions, and a amazing crowd. I was amazed because they basically built all this up within the past seven years. There is really a special scene there in LA. They really keep in contact with social networks like twitter and text messages. We actually did end up having the party because these guys are so organized they arranged a completely new venue within one hour. They transported the sound system there, all of the bars, and everyone who was working including security. They transferred it to East LA. I was already playing again by 2:30 in the new location.

That's incredible!
They sent all these messages to inform everyone that the party is going to be somewhere else and the location was only half the size of the previous one, which was already too small to begin with. There was a line of people down three to four blocks of people trying to get into this event at the second location. It was an amazing night, they set up the sound system while I started to play as the people came in and there was a really special vibe.

Usually they don't even announce the location until the absolute last minute.
Yes, that is what they did then as well. They are really well connected. I applaud them.

Is there a particular reason as to why this was your first return appearance in Los Angeles for nine years?
I don't think anybody wanted to hear my music.

No, that can't be!
Well, I don't think any promoter felt that there were enough people that wanted to hear me play. I was there in the nineties quite a lot because there were these promoters called One Entertainment and they booked me because they liked my music. They used to put on raves like proper LA desert rave parties, with mostly acid Techno but they enjoyed my music so almost every three or four months I would play out in LA for a while until about 2002 and then they stopped doing parties. There was no one else who brought me over to Los Angeles until Moe from Droid.

Well hopefully we can get you over here more often from now on… Do you have an idea when you will return to the United States?
I will definitely be back in March. I will head over to the Winter Music Conference, and I think the week before I will be playing in New York. I will be doing some Columbian gigs afterwards and then I get to go to LA as well again because even though we had a second party there, there were still about a thousand people who didn't make it in to the second location. Droid and I agreed to do another party to make up for it.

In your opinion, what year was the best year for techno thus far and why?
I would say this year! It's come fill circle now and I really do enjoy the old techno times but I don't really live in the past too much. I think that's why I started to do this kind of music in the first place because I got tired of playing old songs so I was just trying to move on basically. Of course we have had great years in techno where may be techno was more popular in the mainstream media as well in Europe and especially in Germany, but it didn't really make any positive difference in the underground movement that we had. This has moved on and on over the years. There are a lot of new influences with the minimal kind of techno and more tech-house music and I really like the mix up with the sort of slow down with techno now but still pretty heavy and very danceable. I think the state of production as it good as it has ever been before. We have great sound systems in clubs now and we have better sounding recordings and it think this greatly benefits the crowd. I think it's an amazing time right now, its really fun. I actually have more fun than ever playing out.

What are your favorite nightclubs in Germany?
The capital of partying in almost all of Europe I would say is Berlin at the moment for various reasons because it is just a huge city with a lot of great locations which were left over from the Eastern part of Germany as the wall fell and there is so much space in Berlin so it makes it cheap and there are a lot of available locations which we don't have here in Frankfurt right now. There are really nice cool locations here in Frankfurt, which have turned into techno locations. They have that in Berlin for example Berghain is one of my favorite places to play in. It's probably one of the craziest clubs I have ever been to and ever played at. In sixty years I think you will be able to talk about Berlin like the way you talked about Berlin back in the twenties. There is a normal routine; there are some areas in Germany where there is not a really big techno or electronic music scene. Northern Germany is a bit more trancy. All the locations and places that have been around fifty years ago, most of them are still around today.

That's good; they are still going strong.
Do you still manage your own bookings schedule?
No, my wife did for a long time. Since we had two daughters now she is not in the position to have enough time to do that anymore. We have a new manager who takes care of all my bookings and my schedule. We are pretty well organized.

Can we expect any future remixes or production under any of your other aliases such as Stigmata?
No, not really. I haven't really been in the studio that much so if I do productions now I work on the stuff that I believe in so I release it under my name. I like to concentrate on the music that I stand for using my name. If I had more time may be I would go into project names as well but I am concentrating on Chris Liebing right now. We are working on some remixes, and I have also had some remixes done for me by Drumcell, and Edit Select, which will be coming out soon. I am trying to find more time to spend in the studio. I've said that to my new manager, which I have been working with for about a year and a half now and he laughs at me and says, “Do you really think you have more time for the studio?” I just really have to plan more time in somehow because producing is really important to me. I really love sitting in the studio and producing music. As of two days ago there was a release including one of my tracks on it on Radio Slave's label

Are you working on any other projects that you would care to share with us?
I'm working on various things. We got a lot of new producers together. There is a new two track release do to come out with Tommy Four Seven. He is a young new talent from London who is now based out of Berlin and he is incredibly talented at producing and DJing. I am really happy to be able to support him and work with him. We also have some upcoming remixes to the new releases we have lined up at the label. We just switched our distribution as well, that was another challenge that we had at the label for the past ten years. We just found a new distributor, which is WordandSound.

It's been a pleasure speaking with you!

365Mag would like to Thank Chris for his time and answers!