It takes genius to bridge generational gaps between musical genres. In this instance, we have the sounds of the early mid 80’s and early 90’s electronica, industrial techno / acidhouse dance / trance underground, scenes born in Chicago. That divergent crossover scene-also influenced by hip hop, trip hop, and rap-ushered in rave with bands including Psychic TV, DJ Collectives Phuture, and later; 808 State, Orb, Orbital, Aphex Twin, Basement Jaxx, Prodigy and more. In the newer generation, we had as these forebearers’ offspring-the modern dance rave scene with artists including Samantha Ronson, the late DJ AM, and now Skrillex, Deadmau5, and the more mainstream Steve Aoki, and David Guetta among others.
And now, the smoking hot dance duo ‘Liv and Mim’ bring the generations together, bringing masterful music and mixes to the masses with old school roots, and hot young vibes that pulse power across the airwaves and Marshall stacks blasting banging beats from continent to continent and shore to shore.
Liv and Mim have got it going on, and together their fierce power activates the world that is NERVO, and they are truly amazing! Tearing up the Australian dance scene there in the land down under, these girls break barriers as not only a pair of the hottest female DJ’s and producers ever-in more ways than one ! -but also, as great singers throwing down goddess like grooves on top of their tracks made for other superstar artists including Ke$ha (they co-wrote the cut ‘VIP’ and ‘Boots and Boys’), David Guetta (they wrote and produced vocals on four tracks of his three time Grammy Nominated Album ‘When Love Takes Over’), and they co-wrote the track with David Guetta ‘Night Of Your Life’ featuring Jennifer Hudson. Also; Pussycat Dolls (they co-wrote ‘If I Was a Man’), and Hanna Montana (they co-wrote Miley Cyrus’ “Let’s Get Crazy,” the theme song to Hannah Montana: The Movie), Kelly Rowland, Deadmau5, Kaskade, and more. And now, the girls are also rocking it for themselves.
After getting snatched up by EMI Records / Astrelworks, they created their own imprint where they also-upon the labels’ asking-discover and sign other new talent with Nervo Records. “We’ve had great training working with other artists,” says Liv Nervo. “We love finding talent, figuring out what that artist stands for, and nurturing their creativity.” Mim adds, “Music and club culture is what turns us on so we want to be at the forefront of that by finding artists and bringing out their best with Nervo Records. We are attracted to challenging, club-friendly sounds fused with pop-it’s really our trademark, so we’re excited to bring our own take on it to the public.”
Born in Melbourne, Australia, sisters Mim and Liv Nervo moved to London as teenagers where the former models spent several years immersing themselves in the British capital’s cutting-edge club culture, absorbing the dancefloor sounds of such inspirations as Daft Punk, Justice, AIR, Basement Jaxx, The Chemical Brothers, and a host of underground producers, while sharpening their songwriting, production, and DJ skills. Those influences come in to play as NERVO stepped out from behind the scenes and become amazing artists in their own right-creating a crunching, hot mix of electronic and pop music that melds mainstream mod with sexy underground.
Liv states, “After so many years writing for and producing tracks for other artists, we are thrilled to be releasing our own material that truly represents who we are.” And Mim agrees, “Our own stuff tends to be a bit more tongue-in-cheek and even risque. When we’re in the studio, we get the chance to be artistically free and that’s really satisfying,” she states. “With our own songs, there are no creative boundaries. We can do whatever we want with the music and lyrics, which is really exciting.”
Nervo launched their first monthly DJ Mix Show-NERVO NATION-on Surius XM last year to rave reviews. The now super highly sought after DJs have appearing at Lollapalooza, Winter Music Conference, Ultra, IMS in Ibiza, Tomorrowland, and Summerdayze. NERVO also spent most of last summer opening for Nicki Minaj and Britney Spears on their massive Femme Fatale arena tour while simultaneously playing late night gigs in clubs and jetting to Vegas for their monthly residency with the Wynn Hotel Group. They then wrapped gigs on the Identity tour.
And, they recently celebrated their first Beatport Number 1 song (plus rocking other charts) with the official Tomorrowland Festival anthem-The Way We See The World-which they co-wrote and co-produced with Afrojack, Dimitri Vegas, and Like Mike). The song is amazing and you can hear it and see the video for it here below. NERVO have also worked with a massive and continuing growing list of collaborators that include Avicii, Armin van Buuren, Afrojack, Kaskade, Laidback Luke, Steve Aoki, LMFAO, Dadalife and John Dahlback. Whew! If all that sounds amazing it’s because it is. THIS is Nervo.
Nervo (Liv): Well, some people do find it quite difficult, because we do sound similar…
Hollywood Sentinel: Are you sick of doing interviews yet? I know this is a job, are you tired of this yet?
Nervo (Liv): No, I like speaking to people, and especially discussing with people about our music and we- you know, feed off other people’s energy, so if they like us, then we like talking about us! (laughs) (…)
Hollywood Sentinel: That’s cool. Well I will say I am a fan of your work, I think you are both awesome and I really love what you are bringing to the dance and club scene.
Nervo: (Liv): Thank you.
Nervo: (Mim): Well you are winning already!
Hollywood Sentinel: You had a lot of successes before you were doing your own music. I read you have worked with Keisha, David Guetta, Pussycat Dolls, Miley Cyrus, and on and on, how did you get started working with all these amazing artists before you began?
Nervo (Liv): Well we’ve been behind the scene girls and studio girls. We’ve always loved writing and producing and that was always really the focus and the main aim, and then what happened is our songs started getting attention, some songs went really well like with David Guetta ‘When Love Takes Over’ (…) so that’s what kind of catapulted us to come out from behind the scenes. But it’s been an organic ride…
Mim: We would work with just anyone that work with us in the beginning really- just anyone, we did alot on our own too, we recorded a few songs and I think you know what it’s like-word gets around, amongst kind of the (hot) scene community within the labels and within the producers and then DJ’s, people said nice things about us or whatever, and it just kind of grew from there.
Hollywood Sentinel: Cool. I read that you were fans of earlier bands like Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx and Chemicals Brothers, is that correct?
Nervo (Liv): Absolutely.
Mim: We love them, we really look up to artists that’s out of the box.
Liv: We love the grittier sound, the different sound, and we love the U.K. sound.
Mim: We love the entrepreneurial artists that aren’t scared to do different things like, I think Calvin Harris is a great example because he started as a pop star I guess in the U.K., and gravitated a little bit towards being a producer, and now is like a full on DJ, you know, and is producing for others, you know, people like Mark Ronsan let’s say is another one, Chrissy Elliot, Will i am, all these artists, (…) are pushing boundaries. Yeah sure they have their own artists projects they work on, and some songs in between as well, but certainly we feel that we grow, and its very creative for what we can do.
Hollywood Sentinel: Definitely. With music now, it’s obviously changed when Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk for example started out, the music industry has changed a lot, and I want to get your thoughts on that with regard to the internet and now Twitter, and earlier it was MySpace, and now MySpace has had difficulties-hopefully Justin Timberlake will save that, we’ll see-but do you feel that the Internet has helped music or hurt it, and where do you see the music scene going?
Nervo (Liv): well I think online has totally changed…
Mim: Revolutionized the music industry…
Liv: Yeah, changed the music industry, and as a DJ, I think it’s fantastic, where we used to have to beg and steal, and forage for the good records, the good records you couldn’t find, and now pretty much if you’ve gone Google for long enough, you can pretty much find a record, that’s been posted ‘once,’ out there, so it’s great for our DJ’ing, because music is so accessible. . I think it’s great for creatives as well, because well look – we did enter the industry as it was beginning to change- but what our ole’ buddies tell us, is it used to be a little more political on who you knew and all that jazz, whereas now, the music can do a little bit more talking, you know, the music can speak for itself, so I think we’re in a good place where- you know, if you are a musician and they put you through a ride or whatever, you should put your music out there, and get instant interaction with the public.
Mim: Yeah there’s enough bloggers to kind of push you out there I think, which is great. We’ve certainly felt a lot of love and support from the bloggers even before we’ve released any records.
Hollywood Sentinel: Cool.
Mim: Yeah, I think the whole reason why we got a record deal, was because of the behind the scene bloggers. They’re the ones that brought the attention to the labels, and I think these days labels, I think they rely on things like that…
Liv: For market research.
Hollywood Sentinel: Exactly, yeah, I totally agree.
Liv: We’ve had many amazing experiences, living in this modern day world with the internet, people that want to work with us now they can contact us directly and they can send us their material and we can pretty much listen to it or look at it straight away rather than going through (another way).
Hollywood Sentinel: Right. That leads me to my next question now, with Nervo Records, what is happening with that, when did you decide to start your own label and bring that under the umbrella of Astrelwerks and Virgin?
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