Chris Liebing / Charlotte De Witte – Liquid Slow EP

Chis Liebing was pioneering business techno years before it found a name. CLR, an acronym for Create Learn Realize, may have been the style’s first conglomerate. Based in Frankfurt, Liebing founded the former powerhouse after he moved on from the relentlessly hard and fast schranz style he helped shape throughout the ’90s. CLR might’ve been the first techno operation to encompass a label, booking agency and popular podcast series, all connected by a clear visual and sonic brand. (These days, these multi-faceted operations—Afterlife, Ostgut Ton—are common.) Musically, the sound supplied by artists like Joseph Capriati and Alex Bau was the opposite of subtle, though the label had interesting moments (Traversable Wormhole, Tommy Four Seven). Its most popular period began in the mid-’00s, which was around the time DJs from another German institution, Berghain, began spreading a slower, more nuanced style of techno. As the likes of Marcel Dettmann and Ben Klock made techno smarter, tracks like Brian Sanhaji’s “Higgs,” all white noise and synth shrieks, dumbed it down.