The kings of the groove live and direct
Interview by Rob Chadwick
Famous for their trademark Iberican sound – a delicious blend of hypnotizing, warm, inviting tribal soundscapes laced with a brilliant use of modern tech elements – Chus + Ceballos have figured out the formula that easily satisfies every punter within the clubbing collective. But it is not only the starry eyed clubbers that worship at the altar of Chus + Ceballos, the worlds most celebrated DJs sing their praises and rely on this duo to fill their box with some of the most essential late night grooves.
More and more people within the electronic scene are releasing albums these days. In anyway did you feel pressured to release an album or has this been something you planned for a while?
This is something that it was in our mind a while ago, it wasn’t a question of pressure,
we’ve just have the feeling that was the right time after many years making singles and a lot of remixes.
The busy schedule was one of the reasons why it didn’t happen before
and we are extremely happy to finally take some time off to make it happens.
What came first for you, was it DJing or producing and how long was it until you moved on to doing both?
Chus: Music has been part of my live since I was very young, for me is not something I
pick at some point of my live like a job, music is a way of live, something you were born with.
My first approach as a DJ was around 1989 in a local night club, five years later I had the chance
to meet producers and musician from my home town, Madrid, David Penn was the first one
who took me to his studio and showed me a complete new world, after that, DJing
and Producing are inseparable things like Yin and Yang.
Pablo: I start making electronic music when I was 16, music production is my passion and I worked really hard till released my
first record in 1999. I had no contacts by that time on the DJ world and DJing for me came way after, my first experience was at
a local bar when I was 20, after to got some experience on the decks and a few successful productions, I was finally DJ’ing.
What is the basic set up you use when in the studio?
Regarding the DAW, after working for so many years with Logic Audio
we have been producing with Ableton Live lately, it’s a very intuitive and fast way
of producing, very oriented to electronic musician and DJs. Regarding plug-ins, we use so many!
We love every single one from Native Instruments, Fab Filter, SPL, Arturia or Sound Toys
to name but a few. To gives some warm to the digital audio, we use Dangerous Audio summing
unit and some classic pieces of hardware like the Avalon valve compressor, some classic
Synths like the Moog Voyager, Virus or Nord Lead, and some new stuff like the Aira series
from Roland that is a new hybrid approach. We believe that a mix of hardware
and software bring a nice balance to the music production, the key is to use the best of both worlds.
The first single off the album is a team effort between yourselves and Leonardo Gonnelli, how did this relationship first come about and do you find it easy to work together?
We already work together last year on ‘Soledad’ that became a summer anthem in Ibiza, so
after the great experience of working together we were looking forward to collaborate
once again and making a follow up single for the album. We have a great chemistry working
with Leonardo, he is a great producer, great friend and overall a great person, that good
energy is reflected in the music we make together. Abisinia was the result of a
deep research on Ethnic influences for bring something completely new and different at the
same time, we love it and we decided to release it as the first single.
Is there anyone out there who hasn’t appeared on the album but you would have loved to have teamed up with?
It would be an impossible mission to collaborate with all the artist we’d like to work within just one
album, so we decided to invite some of our closed friends to join us doing remixes of the singles, Uner
was the first one, Dosem next, and much more to come….
Do you each have a highlight that you can take away from working on the album?
To work in an artist’s album is definitely one of the best decisions we ever made.
To feel free and do not having the pressure to make a dance-floor track, is like to
have a white paper to write anything we want, opening our minds and our creativity.
Besides, the chance to work with great vocalists and compose deeper tracks was priceless.
We are so happy with the results and we are beyond excited to release it and for sure
we are already thinking on the follow up…
What was the hardest part of making Nomadas?
The hardest thing was to find the proper quality time to seat down both of us in the studio considering our busy
schedule, It is quite difficult to compose an album when you are touring every single weekend and running a
label, so we decided to take advantage of that situation and getting ideas on the road, as
real nomads. That’s why we titled ‘Nomadas’ to the album, the Spanish word
for Nomads, because we got inspired while traveling, catching ideas and inspiration from
different countries, cultures and people over the years.
A handful of artists remix their own works occasionally after an album release, could we expect to see this from you, or even bringing in other artists to remix this album?
We have selected six songs from the album to deliver them as singles releases and
to be remixed by artists we admire and respect, ‘Abisinia’ has been remixed by Uner, the
second single called ‘Black Rock City’ in tribute to the Burning Man Festival will be
remixed by Dosem and future releases will be launched from September onwards with great names to be announced
soon, of course the single releases will be accompanied by extended version of our original versions.
Have you had the chance to test any of the tracks on the road? If so which tracks have had the best reaction
When we sat down to compose the album, we had in mind to do an album to listen
and not an album for the dance floor. Most of the tracks were written looking for a
listening experience rather than a dance floor experience. But of course, the roots are there, so
there is still some tracks that works pretty well on the dance floor like Abisinia, Esvedra, Black Rock City
or Keep It Dancin’. We’ve been playing them many times at different moments of the night
with an excelent crowd reaction. The Final touch will come by hand of the remixes, 100% focus on the dancefloor.
Finally, what do you want the listener to take away from the Nomadas experience?
Nomadas is a trip back to our roots and the different experiences that we lived over
the years of traveling, we’d like that the listeners transport themselves to all these
different places and moments, making them, their own ones. The aim of the album was to offer the
audience a complete experience, something nice to listen to in a Long Play format, more deep
and musical than the usual productions we make for DJ’ing.
Find them on the web:
http://www.chusceballos.com/
https://www.facebook.com/chusceballos
https://twitter.com/chusceballos
https://soundcloud.com/chusceballos
