The popular Manufactured Superstars duo Bradley Roulier and Shawn Sabo has been busy touring from coast to coast after their latest successful track releases, “Take Me Over” ft Scarlett Quinn, “Serious” ft Selina Albright, with rumors of a release ft Paris Hilton titled “Drunk Text.” Manufactured Superstars are incredible producers and performers and are deeply respected co-owners of Beta Nightclub in Denver and founding partners of the online music store, Beatport.
There’s only one word to describe Manufactured Superstars when they take over the stage: unforgettable. The pair are energetic and fun, and they are ready to infect the crowd with their unique musical style by blazing through 60 to 65 different tracks in a span of two hours. They take their DJ sets very seriously by keeping their musical content creative and different. PinstripeMag spoke with the Manufactured Superstars‘ Shawn Sabo and Brad Roulier recently in New York City. Here’s what went down.
PM: With your impressive background as co-owners of Beta club, co-founders of Beatport.com and experienced producers, what keeps your passion for music going?
MANUFACTURED SUPERSTARS (Brad Roulier): It’s about the people really, every night is a different night, every party is a different party. For those who are going out to see us or going to one of our events. It’s always about living in the moment. What we did last week or what we did last month or last year doesn’t really matter. For the people that paid attendance to be there, it’s about tonight and trying to make that experience unforgettable.
PM: The music video for ‘Take Me Over’ ft Scarlett Quinn (Black Hole) is partly reminiscent of the major motion picture The Hangover. What did you want your viewers to take away from this video visually and musically?
MANUFACTURED SUPERSTARS (Shawn Sabo): I think we just wanted to show that we are really fun, energetic DJs, trying to do something fun with the crowd and keep things different. We try to bring the party everywhere we go and keep people excited, we wanted to get that across in the video. It’s just every night is a different night, every night it’s fun. We really want to celebrate with all the people.
(Brad Roulier): That video is pretty easy to come across because we have a residency in Hollywood at Playhouse and our friends live there, so pretty much every night that we play in Hollywood, we end-up back with more people. But it was really easy to come-up with the concept because it’s kind of what happens every time we are in Hollywood: there’s always an after party, the sun is always coming-up, the penthouses are always trashed, then we pack-up and leave. (Laughs)… So when we were coming up with the concept for the video we were like, let’s just have a night and dramatize things, exaggerate a little bit, but it’s not too far away from what we try to have happen every night.
PM: Currently the single, “Take Me Over,” is tracking; the video is #2 in Canada on BPM-TV and charting “top 10” on BPM [channel] on Sirius XM Radio and other commercial terrestrial radio stations within the U.S. Your new single, “Serious” ft Selina Albright (Black Hole) — how would you best describe the sound of this track?
MANUFACTURED SUPERSTARS (Brad Roulier) : We wanted the song to be really current. We love house music. Our first song is more of a pop record, we wanted our second single to be house music that we can DJ the original track. Just really found Selena, she’s got an amazing voice and with the music that we wrote, finding the old ’80s track that she re-sang, we changed it up a little but it was just a perfect fit for the summer 2011.
PM: Everyone is excited to hear more about your 3rd single ft Paris Hilton and titled, “Drunk Text” (Black Hole). Can you tell us the story about how you came to collaborate with Paris Hilton on this track?
MANUFACTURED SUPERSTARS (Shawn Sabo) : I grew-up with an amazing director named Johnny Lia, He’s done work with U2, Beyonce, 50 Cent, and SNL. Luckily he liked the idea. He heard the track and he immediately had some great ideas to do in the music video. We were really honored to work with him. Paris was a great team player and was in the video with us the entire time. It’s really an art piece that tells the story of a night out sending drunk text messages with us and Paris with some club scenes. It’s a great video to work on and we are really excited to share it with the public over the next couple of weeks.
MANUFACTURED SUPERSTARS (Brad Roulier) : Our friend was dating Paris. We started hanging-out with her and she came to see us DJ quite frequently…and he was kind of talking to us about, “Hey, you know Paris wants to do a song… you guys really should think about working with her on something,” and we had already had the concept of drunk texting. We wanted to make a different track than we did in the past, we wanted a tech-house track, we wanted a late night, three-in-the-morning type of track for our album…and drunk text was the concept around that because usually three, four in the morning when you’re listening to tech-house, most of us and our friends are usually drunk. We were inspired by an old house record called “Black Light Sleaze” by Peace Division. I always really liked that track, we used to DJ it Drai’s in Vegas. If we ever play there again I would like to start our set off at 125BPM, just really a good track to start our set out with late at night. We wrote the track with Lea Luna and thought that Paris Hilton will be perfect for the track. It’s just spoken words, no singing, just a girl telling her story of what happens throughout the night. That’s how we came-up with the concept of “Drunk Text.” I think it’s going to surprise a lot of people. It’s very underground for us and even more underground for Paris Hilton. We got some really cool remixes from Sander Kleinenberg. I think it’s going to catch people off-guard, it’s coming out real soon.
PM: For those that haven’t seen you play live, Manufactured Superstars have their residency at Beta Club in Denver, Club XS in Vegas, and just did the IDentity Festival Tour, Nocturnal Wonderland, Electric Daisy Carnival, the Beatport party during Ultra Music Festival and many more major festivals. So for those that have yet to see you play live, can you sum-up in three sentences what they can expect from your live performances in terms of style and music? In addition, where are some of your upcoming gigs?
MANUFACTURED SUPERSTARS (Brad Roulier): We fly through music! We come from that A.D. hip-hop generation. We play lots of songs in a two-hour set. There’s a good chance you’ll hear 60 to 65 different tracks. We fly through music, we keep a consistent kick and clap, we keep it 128bpm, keep really fun and busy. There’s lots of changes, builds, we go in between electro-house, house, progressive-house and occasionally we throw in a hip-hop sample.
(Shawn Sabo): The biggest thing, we try to keep it really fun. We try to be very unexpected. We take our DJ sets very seriously. We do lots of edits for every song we play. We try to keep our content different than any other DJs. Even if we play a song you’ve heard before, we try to make a different version or a re-edit or a remix for the songs together and try to make our own little spin on it to kind of make it fun and different and really keep the Manufactured Superstars sound.
PM: Lastly as we go into 2012, can you tell us where fans can follow you and a little bit about your upcoming full length studio album?
MANUFACTURED SUPERSTARS (Shawn Sabo): We are really excited for 2012! We have lots of things in the pipeline, lots of great collaborations, none of which I am sorry we are ready to share yet…but we are working on the album hard.
Video Interview
Manufactured Superstars featuring Scarlett Quinn – “Take Me Over”
Written by Pauline Saade
pauline {at} pinstripemag {dot} com
