House DJ Pablo Ceballos is another wunderkind story: Kid falls in love with techno, meets mentor, explodes worldwide. During the early Nineties, bands like Depeche Mode and Massive Attack were among those that attracted the then-teenage Ceballos to synth-based music. Soon he began to gravitate more toward house sounds and became inspired to try his hand at producing. At the same time, his native Spain became a global hot spot for the growing tribal house sound, the primal, drum-centric vibe favored by DJs such as Danny Tenaglia and Miami's own Oscar G.
What would become the famed Chus & Ceballos musical partnership has its origins in 1998, with DJ Chus's weekly Wednesday "Stereo" event at the Kadoc Club in the Portuguese Algarve. In 1999 Chus relocated the event and himself to Madrid, where he met Ceballos. The encouraging results of their subsequent collaborative productions and remixes prompted Chus to launch the joint-operated record label Stereo Productions. The imprint's core product is the "Iberican sound," a floor-filling, double-edged blade of tribal darkness and funky smoothness. Along the way, the pair has also contributed to labels such as Doubledown, Moody, and Yoshitoshi. Ceballos appears by himself this Saturday for a DJ set at Space, but it promises to be no less fascinating a dance-floor journey with a solo pilot. — Eric W. Saeger
