Your DJing style is very brave, do you ever get nervous when you play? S: “Well, we kind of own it now, we’re not scared. People enjoy everything, most people want to hear a few songs that they know.” B: “I take pride in not being scared. I started putting on raves with tons of risk, then went to Beatport, which was a huge risk. The worst you can do is fail. I mean, you could lose a lot of money financially or whatever, but you can’t be scared. Any time people ask us about opening a club or starting your own business, you’ve just got to do it, and once you say that you’re going to do it, you have to be committed to it. And things never go perfect, and things go wrong, but if you own it and you believe in it, and you’re passionate about it, you can get through it. We’re prime examples, we started Beatport from Denver, Colorado, a global international brand…”
Beatport is quite different from what you do, though, it’s more serious, it’s not a massively fun site. But you’re all about fun as Manufactured Superstars… B: “That was intentional too.” S: “It’s a tool too, it’s a tool and a resource for DJs.” B: “Some people think, ‘Oh, the guys that started Beatport’, they immediately assume we play tech house. We could have started like that. I love tech house. We purposely chose not to be a Beatport-esque DJ [act].”
You come across as very egoless people… S: “We’re just so excited for all the support, we’re really excited for the opportunity. We’re really excited to see house music and dance music blowing up on all fronts, because when it really comes down to it, we’re dance music people and we’ve been listening to it for years.”
How do you think the scene has changed and progressed? B: “For America, hip-hop was so important, hip-hop was the club scene; because of whatever issues, hip-hop isn’t very relevant in the clubs right now, anywhere. People want to go out and people want to dance, and so house is the alternative right now, because it’s longer and more accessible, and it’s great to see America embracing it, because dance music isn’t going to be around forever. You can see it right now, the bpms are slowing down, everyone’s playing 122 and 123. Tiësto was only playing at 130 last night, I remember hearing him play at 138. We play at 127 and we think we’re special, we slowed it down, it’s crazy. It’s going to continue to evolve, it’s fine.” S: “It went from the warehouses to excessive production, lights, lasers, and the music sounds really good now, you hear Funktion One soundsystems, it’s one of the best soundsystems in the world, everything just sounds amazing. You play a Jamie Jones record on a soundsystem and it sounds amazing, you play it on a laptop, and you’re like, ‘what is this?’ It doesn’t sound good at all, because you don’t hear the subtle
basslines and the kicks.” B: “Quality always rises to the top. If you break it down to what it was, it’s significantly better than what we were listening to 10 years ago. And the new sub genres that are coming up, like trap music, and dubstep wasn’t even a genre in 2010 and electro house wasn’t even a genre on Beatport until 2007.”
What do you think you’ll be doing this time next year? B: “We’re doing more beats, we’re doing less big breakdowns, less big room Swedish House Mafia stuff, somewhere in-between. We love drums and we love vocals, and we don’t necessarily have to have a huge breakdown.” S: “Working, pushing the studio. We’re really happy with our productions. We’re still not exactly where we want to be yet, but it’s getting better and better.” S: “There are two guys that we work with that are opening up for us now, Jerameel and Jquintel, and they’ve been doing some engineering with us, helping us. Jerameel’s an amazing sound designer, he does a lot of sample CD work with his brother. They’re just amazing, and they do a lot of quality mixdowns. We’re trying to build our own sound libraries and they’re really good at helping us build our sound. We start an idea and then bounce it off of them. They might be coming on tour with us next year. They’re awesome dudes, we do a lot of remixing together as well.”
djmag.com 015
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