Chris Liebing’s highly-anticipated remake of Emmanuel Top’s 1994 classic ‘Turkish Bazar’ arrives on the 20th of December on his label, CLR. Originally released by Le Petit Prince, the track has remained a club favorite, and Liebing’s reimagined version takes it to new heights. With the iconic spoken word vocal from the original and a heavier dose of acid-infused 303, Liebing adds raw, unfiltered energy and pounding drums, while balancing the intensity with airy pads and subtle sequences. Extensively road-tested and approved by Emmanuel Top, this version captures the essence of the original while showcasing Liebing’s unique, modern twist. CLR, the label Liebing founded in 1999 and relaunched in 2021, continues to push boundaries in techno, having hosted both established and emerging artists like Shlomi Aber, Dubfire, and Risa Taniguchi.
Pre-order Chris Liebing’s remake of ‘Turkish Bazar’ HERE.
Read our interview with Chris below.
If you weren’t a DJ and producer, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
I would probably be living in the same place as I live right now, in the mountains in Switzerland and might be working as a ski guide or ski instructor. At one point in my life there also was a possibility of becoming an airline pilot, maybe I could have done that as well.
What inspired you to revisit Emmanuel Top’s ‘Turkish Bazar’ and how did the idea of a remake come about?
I have always been a big fan of Emmanuel Top´s productions. With his very distinctive Acid sound, he was definitely one of the biggest producers in the 90s. Amongst many of his absolutely amazing tracks, ‘Turkish Bazar’ was always one of my favorites. Actually, my initial idea was not to make a complete remake of it, this rather just happened in a flow without proper plan. It all started one day in the beginning of the summer, when I was sitting in my studio and had my little Devil Fish 303 in front of me. I thought about recreating an Emmanuel Top bass line and ‘Turkish Bazar’ was the track that first came to my mind, mainly because I am also a big fan of Jim Morrison. For those who don’t know, the vocal sample “The music was new black polished chrome and came over the summer like liquid night“ is a poem by the man himself. So I sat down and recreated the bass line with my 303, then I edited the Jim Morrison vocal and listening back to what I had just done, I thought, “hey, that would make for a cool intro”. The whole poem of Jim Morrison is a little longer than the quote that Emmanuel Top used in the original version, and I kind of liked all of it. So I used the whole thing, added a kick drum and it became an intro. I actually played this intro out quite a lot, but most people first heard it when I played it at the Street Parade in Zurich. After this gig I received so many comments from people asking about the intro, what it was, if it was a new version of Emmanuel Top´s ‘Turkish Bazar’, wanting to know what was going on and where the whole track could be found. And that´s really where the idea came from, that maybe I should just sit down and recreate the whole track. So I did that, I sat down and basically recreated each and every sound of the entire track. With the help of some knowledgeable people I managed to recreate every single synth line and each little sound. Everything came together pretty well. I always thought that I would love to play the original version of the track, but sound-wise it did not mix very well with today’s music and therefore wouldn´t really fit into my sets. I wanted to have a version that I could play in my sets, which sounds as if it was produced today but with the spirit of the 90s. So I left the arrangement exactly the way it was, only changed the intro as mentioned and slightly lengthened the outro so that it is easier for DJs to mix. That´s really how it all happened, it was a pretty organic process and a great learning experience to do this.
The original ‘Turkish Bazar’ is a timeless classic – what elements did you feel were essential to preserve, and what did you want to reinvent?
Sorry, I basically just answered this already in my previous reply. I thought that every element was essential to preserve because it´s simply a perfect track. So I didn´t even try to remix it, that´s why I am always pointing out that it´s a remake and not a remix. The essential core of the track is the exact same arrangement and I really tried to recreate each single sound as close to the original as possible. Obviously they are not 100% equal as it´s thirty years later now and I wanted to make them sound more modern, but I literally took every little shaker and bongo or delay in order to recreate it as close as possible to the original sound. The intro is a little longer as I used the whole poem of Jim Morrison and at the end I added a longer kick drum outro so that it is easier to mix, but I think I mentioned that already 🙂
Your version adds an extra dose of acid and raw energy. For the producers out there, what was your creative process in reworking the 303 elements and layering them with the pounding drums?
The 303 I used is a rebuilt Devil Fish, which I have owned for almost 25 years. I had it custom-made rebuilt in order to have a Devil Fish version, which means that you have a few more options like an overdrive and a lot of added buttons and knobs to go beyond the usual scale of what a normal 303 is capable of. I used a lot of saturation and – if I may plug this now – a lot of really nice plug-ins from Plugin Alliance, a company that I can only recommend to all you nerds out there, because of their variety of really awesome high quality plug-ins you can choose from. I had a huge kick-drum that somehow came together with this bass line and then I just sat down and recreated the track bit by bit, something that I had never done before. I had watched a few videos of other people recreating old classics and how they were doing it. To any producer out there I totally recommend this process, sit down and try to recreate a track from scratch. It is an incredible learning experience. You learn so much about effects, synthesizers and sounds. You are training your ear and it really is a unique process. Obviously I wanted to stick to the original arrangement, but having the freedom to make all those sounds from scratch with modern production techniques and more punch, really was a lot of fun.
The spoken word vocal from the original track is iconic. How did you approach integrating it into your remake to retain its authenticity while giving it your signature touch?
When I found the Jim Morrison track, which is only a minute long, I used stem separation to extract his vocal as an acapella without any other sounds in the background. I found that the rest of the lyrics, not only the lyrics that Emmanuel Top was using, were so cool that I would use them in their original pitch in the very beginning. During the track I pitched them up the exact way I had heard that Emmanuel Top had done it in his original version, which gave it its distinctive sound. That´s why you hear the vocal in its original pitch in the intro and pitched up throughout the rest of the track. And of course I used some really nice reverb and delay effects.
You’ve mentioned road-testing this track extensively. How did live audience reactions shape the final version?
It was an interesting and beautiful process as I started playing out early versions in which some of the elements were still missing, like some synth lines that were more complicated to recreate. I needed some time to really figure out how to do this. Once you get really deep into a track, you realize that there is so much going on. I have known this track for thirty years and I played it to death, but I never realized how many delayed bongos and congas are in there or how many incredible synth lines are lying on top of each other. A good approach to finding the right sounds for mentioned synth lines is usually to look for those old synthesizers. I used my Prophet 6 for two of those synth lines and found very similar sounds. It kept growing week by week as I kept working on it and then I played it out on the weekend. That´s when I realized which elements were too loud or had to be louder or what had to sound a little bit different. The audience reactions were great and that was very reassuring and important but they did not really influence the actual process of remaking the track, as I had to figure out on my own how to make it sound as close to the original as possible. It was literally a work in progress for almost two months and then one day I had the final version and was very happy with it.
What was it like getting Emmanuel Top’s blessing for this release, and did he provide any input or feedback during the process?
No, I decided to approach Emmanuel Top only at almost the very end of the process. I would say that it was the second to last stage when I sent Emmanuel my version. I have never met him personally and I got his e-mail address from Terence Fixmer, so I sent him my version, told him that I am trying to recreate his track and that I am still on it. I wrote to him that it would be an honor to be able to release it on my label. When he told me that he really liked my remake, I finally did the finishing touches and actually mastered it myself as well. Then I sent him the final version for his approval and we made a contract. I was very honored that he gave me his blessing to release it on my label CLR. All in all it was such a beautiful process, to not only recreate the track, but to also get in touch with Emmanuel and be able to tell him how much this track and of course all of his productions always meant to me. For me it was much more than just doing a remake of a track, but also paying homage to one of the greatest electronic music producers of our generation. Again, big thanks and shout outs to Emmanuel for letting me do this!
CLR reemerged in 2021 after a hiatus. How has the label evolved since its inception, and what’s your vision for its future?
Yeah, I was putting CLR a little bit on ice for altogether five years, in which I spent most of the time working on my own music, precisely on the production of the two albums I did for MUTE Records entitled ‘Burn Slow’ and ‘Another Day’. I also focused very much on my DJing, my daughters and family life. That´s essentially why the label was on a hiatus for five years, but during the pandemic I already realized that I really wanted to bring it back. Especially in these days with so many different types of Techno out there, I really wanted to get this platform back, to showcase my idea of Techno and what I want to do. Essentially it is the same thing I always wanted to do, driving, kind of forward Techno that is dark and gets people to dance in club or festival environments. It has a certain feeling and vibe to it that I can´t really describe. It´s something that I hear and something I am trying to produce myself. After getting the label up and running again, I have to say that I was surprised about the reactions and that people actually remembered CLR. A little later we also reintroduced the CLR Podcast, which I had also put on a hiatus and to be able to bring all this back was a blessing. I am having so much fun doing it and we are almost in year four now of running the label again. I am so happy to be working with such amazing talent, just to mention a few, The Southern, DEAS, DJ Dextro, Klint and Risa Taniguchi. I can only tell you, we have so much stuff coming up in 2025, so much to look forward to. So much good Techno is coming out at the moment and I am really happy about that!
You’ve worked with both established artists and emerging talent on CLR. How do you balance nurturing new voices while staying true to your roots in techno?
To be honest, I don´t really think about that at all. Sometimes I am receiving demos and sometimes I also ask artists who have released on my label and who I want to continue to work with to send me new stuff. It´s a mix of working together with emerging talent, motivating them to do something and just randomly getting sent awesome stuff. Sometimes I hear a demo and immediately think: “wow this is great, I want to release it”. Normally it is not that I try to find certain things, in a way it´s rather that those things are finding me. I think label work is a fantastic way of creating something in our electronic music scene. You can bring artists together who haven´t been collaborating before or you can inspire artists to do something that they wouldn´t have done without the idea of releasing something on the label and so on. It´s an intuitive process and a constant flow, it kind of happens by itself and that´s the beauty of it.
How do you keep challenging yourself creatively after so many years in the industry?
I don´t really see it as challenging myself. This also comes sort of automatically. I mean you always have times when you are more creative and times when you are less creative, but I strongly feel that even with all the experience that I bring in from the thirty years I have been doing this now, I still haven´t gotten to the point where I want to get to. Sound-wise, technically, from a production point of view, there are always so many new things to learn. There are so many new amazing producers who actually show you how great music can be produced, which makes you want to learn more. It´s so much fun, I am having more fun in the studio now than ever before. And as long as it happens that way, it is a natural and organic process and this is also what I always loved in this business. If I wouldn´t feel it, I would simply not do it. That´s also why I had a five year long break from the label, because at that point I wanted to do something completely different. And I just did it with the two albums on MUTE that are not really Techno-oriented but rather kind of leftfield and vocal-oriented. For me it was a dream come true to release this music on MUTE, as I have been a fan of this label for the last 45 years. And it was even more special to me, because for those two albums I have been working together with Ralf Hildenbeutel, who is an absolutely genius musician and producer who has influenced me heavily in my early days in Techno. So many things had come together in that aspect for me that I just had to take a step back from all my CLR efforts for a while. Nowadays I am not really thinking much about what I want to do next, but I just float around and continue to do things I enjoy and have passion for. Like that I am not in danger of getting burned out, because if it doesn´t work, I don´t force it anymore and just don´t do it. At the moment I feel extremely energized about CLR and all the great artists who send me unreleased music for the label, as well as about my own productions.
Finally, what do you hope fans – both old and new – take away from your version of ‘Turkish Bazar’?
That is a very good, last question. I hope it goes full circle and shows the new generation, which has been so heavily affected by the pandemic, to the point that they might lack a little bit of knowledge about the music of the old days, that there is such amazing, crazy good music from twenty or thirty years ago. I hope I can inspire them to look back, discover and get to love some of those old tracks. I know that there are many new DJs who play those tunes today and I hope I made a remake that also older DJs might play as it sound-wise fits into their sets now. I hope that they won´t think I tried to make a remix of the track, but appreciate that I totally respected the original and more than anything made it sound different. Maybe I inspire DJs to play this Emmanuel Top track again and to also revisit further tracks of this great artist.
Thank you!
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