What do you when you’re managing a website as grand as Beatport? You listen to a lot of music (duh_. What’s next? You decide to launch your own music project (duh). That’s what the creative duo of Bradley Roulier (Beatport's founder) and Shawn Sabo (Beatport’s marketing guru) did in 2008, when they launched Manufactured Superstars. After remixing every big name in the game, they started coming out with original releases before finally dropping their debut full-length LP Party All The Time last year. We’ve caught up with the Denver-based show stoppers to discuss their trademark space suits, hilarious Paris Hilton collaboration and balancing day lives with holding club residencies.

How are you, where are you and what are you up to?

Shawn: We’re both in Denver. I'm at my house, working at the studio.

Bradley: And I just got back from the club.

Sober?

Bradley: Yeah, it was work. I own the club here in Denver, it’s called Beta Nightclub. It's open Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

How did you two meet and decided to start working together?

Shawn: When I moved here from the east coast I was a drum’n’bass DJ and Brad was a promoter. I used to play his parties. Then he started Beatport, I joined him there and we eventually became great friends and decided to start Manufactured Superstars.

Did it work from the get-go or you’ve had something you had to overcome?

Bradley: Our idols were 2ManyDJs and we wanted to be a party version of them. So we started out not thinking we were gonna be touring DJs or producers. We never planned to play a hundred shows a year all over the world. It was more of a fun project that we did while we were at Beatport that kinda took a life of its own.

Here’s a tricky question then: Is it easier to work together or alone?

Shawn: It’s easier to work together for what we do with this project.

So Bradley, you were a club promoter back in the day and now own a club. Does it help with navigating your DJ/producer career?

Bradley: Yeah, as I just have a good aspect of what’s working in the club and what’s not. We do a lot of music genres – from bass music to techno – as we’re exposed to so much great music all the time. I have the ability to go into the DJ booth and go ‘Hey, what track is that?’. And we’re also able to hear and see what gets good reaction from the crowd.

Obviously we have to talk about Beatport. How does owning such a monster of a website help your music career?

Bradley: We started producing in 2008 – that’s when Beatport really was starting to have a life of its own. So we were able to tell what genres were emerging whether it was indie dance or nu disco or electro house. So we could choose what space we wanted to occupy as producers. We never wanted to be techno DJs and we could tell that electro house was getting more and more popular.

Do you ever take advantage of your Beatport success and like call a potential collaborator?

Bradley: Yeah, it did help us in the beginning, before we started producing original content. We were doing remixes so we're remixing people like Bruno Mars, Tiesto and David Guetta. Obviously that helped establish us as producers. We never really collaborated with anybody on original tracks but we had our share of remixes for sure.

Do you feel like we need more music-related social media? I mean, I’m interviewing you for MySpace, which alone helped launching many careers.

Bradley: The public gravitates towards what they need, whether it was MySpace back in the day or Beatport. Artists always migrate to the platform that they find the most comfortable. What’s cool today might not be cool tomorrow. People are gonna go where they wanna go. Look at Soundcloud: it used to be a huge music platform and even they’re having struggles right now. It’s really hard to say what people want social media-wise. You need to be able to connect music to the fans.

What other options for your duo’s name did you have?

Bradley: Original name was Digitally Manufactured Superstars, but that was just too long.

Shawn: We came up with it right away, because in our mind whether it’s Britney Spears or The Rolling Stones or Jay-Z – everyone is a manufactured superstar as they all have a lot of help in their careers. It’s never just one person.

Do you actually have a huge team behind you?

Bradley: We have a manager and an agent. And a record label.

How would you describe your sound? Do you have a catchy quirky way or presenting your music to the audience?

Bradley: I like to say that we play house music with pop influence. We always try to keep everything around 126-128bpm and keep it on a housier vibe.

Where did the NASA thing come from? Which one of you wanted to be an astronaut in childhood and convinced the other one to wear space suits on stage?

Bradley: It evolves. One of the biggest parties I threw for the last 15 years was a party called Skylab here in Denver. It was a space-themed party, we do it every September. And then our first residency was in Vegas in 2009 and it was space-themed again. We wore our space suits so much at these events and then Halloween came… People really liked the suits, so we decided to wear them all the time. They gave us a way of standing out. We have different versions: orange, white, short, long. People call us ‘astronaut DJs’ now.

Don’t you boil yourself wearing those? They look super hot.

Bradley: They’re really comfortable. But we had to make shorter versions for the pool parties.

Do you bring them to dry cleaners?

Bradley: We have a bunch. They’re not very expensive. I do take mine to the dry cleaners, but we probably have about 10 anyway of each color.

What record would you take to space?

Shawn: Our whole record. All of the Beastie Boys records.

Let’s talk about your debut album. What took you so long? You’ve been around since 2008 but only dropped the album last year.

Bradley: We put out three EPs. And we put out about 50 original songs. But with the album we wanted to create something that we were 100% happy with. As an artist you’re never really happy and always want to tweak something, so these 16 songs was a big project for us.

I actually love your Paris Hilton collaboration about drunk texting. What was it like working with her?

Bradley: At the time we had a residency at XS nightclub and Paris was dating the owner, Cy Waits. We DJed her Birthday and would party with her a lot in LA and Vegas. And eventually offered her to do her own take on an old track “Blacklight Sleaze”, where the girl’s just talking about crazy night to a beat. One of our friends wrote the lyrics and Paris changed some of them and recorded it. A lot of young people drunk text, so it was a fun idea. We also did a video, it came together really quickly. Paris kept telling us to put the track out, but our label told us she needed to sign off on that, but her management wouldn’t let her. So it never really officially came out as a proper release.

Too bad. But now she’s recording a new album, so maybe hit her up about a sequel track?

Bradley: We’re good friends, but we haven’t really talked about her new album. We’re big fans of hers though.

How often do you send out some shameful drunk texts?

Bradley: Not that much anymore. But when we were younger—too often!

Shawn: I usually can’t read them when I wake up, because they’re just jumping up and down.

What’s the craziest thing that ever happened at your show?

Bradley: At Skylab couple of years ago somebody ran on stage naked. Somehow they made it all the way up there, which was pretty crazy. All they had on was a Colorado flag, which I thought was very funny. It was a girl holding a flag up in the air.

That’s a good fan to have.

Bradley: I don’t know if she was a fan of us or the party.

…Or Colorado!

Bradley: We played a party in LA one time. There were a bunch of pornstars on stage and they got into a fist fight and security was caring them out over the shoulders. There were girls throwing punches everywhere. Pretty crazy night.

What are your plans for 2016?

Bradley: This year is all about promoting this album. We have three more singles that are gonna go out to radio. Touring every weekend, keeping the club rocking. We haven’t gotten to work on new music yet, but we plan to around summertime. We’ll probably release a new EP by the end of the year.