Yes- We've Got a Lot of Nervo


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By Bruce Edwin

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 risqué. 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.

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An Exclusive Interview with Nervo by Bruce Edwin

The Hollywood Sentinel - Bruce Edwin: Ladies thanks for being here, you're obviously on a massive tour now, Liv and Mim, how can I tell the difference between the two of you—your voices?

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?

Nervo (Liv): Well Nervo Records is a funny thing, because we were originally approached by EMI, to get up Nervo Records. (EMI owns Virgin Records which own Astrelworks which Nervo is a part of).

Hollywood Sentinel: Smart.

Nervo (Liv): And it was really to find artists and sign them to our label and then develop them until released, but midway through our negotiations, EMI really wanted us to sign ourselves as artists to the label, so the focus kind of shifted a little bit basically from being what—scouts—to being artists, which has been interesting, challenging, exciting, and scary at the same time!

(laughs)

Nervo (Liv): We are a bit apprehensive about signing ourselves as artists because we were happy doing what we were doing, but we're lucky and fortunate now that they have given us the liberty to release the music we want to release, so we're really happy that they are happy with 'We're All No One' and yeah! Let's see where it takes us!

Hollywood Sentinel: That's amazing, that's great.

Nervo (Liv): Yeah, I mean we still definitely (...) are always looking to work with talented people, just really, it's about juggling time (laughs) - to fit it in while we're touring!

(At that last remark, loud, shrill beeping goes off for a number of seconds. the fire alarm of the building I am in is blasting! Knowing it's not an emergency, I continue and apologize for the massive sound intrusion - editor)

Nervo (Liv): That's O.K! Now if anyone ever asks us, what's the funniest thing that ever happened in an interview? We'll tell them, 'The fire alarm went off!'

Hollywood Sentinel: (Laughs). This may be a bad segway, but speaking of fire, you're both super hot, beautiful, and also talented. How has your looks affected your going out there on tour on stuff, at raves with twenty thousand people and more, I mean have you had security issues, or stuff like that?

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Nervo (laughs) Liv: We've not had any freakies! We've had no freaky fans or anything like that, because I mean look, heaven forbid it to happen but we are really fortunate, we have nothing but great lovers around us, you know, supporters...

Hopefully one thing to note, the support we get from our fans, like on our our online, is just overwhelming, like if we're having a bad day, or we're not sure about an idea (...) if we're in the studio, it's a really lovely thing to get that support, to read people's comments, and to know that your music actually does sometimes speak to them...

Nervo (Mim): ...And get heard...

Nervo (Liv): Yeah...

Hollywood Sentinel: Yeah, one of the unique things about you also is that you both sing too, did you have training vocally, and when did you start singing?

Nervo (Liv): We've been singing forever...

Nervo (Mim): We've always been in choir, and we've always learned instruments like piano, we've just been music addicts I think (laughs)

Hollywood Sentinel: That's cool.

Nervo (Liv): I think music is one of those things, I mean you do pick it, but I think eventually it picks you. It picks you, and it becomes this faucet—so we've definitely always been music addicts—music lovers.

Hollywood Sentinel - Bruce Edwin: How did it happen with the Britney Spears tour? Because that obviously brought you to a whole new level and a whole new realm of fans. I personally think Britney's awesome, but what was that like and will you tell us a little bit about that?

Nervo (Liv): Well I still remember the day that we were asked to do it, I just couldn't believe it, I was like—you mean what?! Now our agent asked us if we'd like to tour with Britney Spears, and you know, we had done clubs and club tours, but we had never done a pop arena tour, even though we do rap for pop stars, you know we DJ, so it's very different, but our agent was telling us how Britney really liked our music and she wanted more underground things, so we naturally jumped at the opportunity, you know it was such an experience. I feel when we're old and gray, we're going to be talking about it!

(laughs)

Nervo (Liv): We're big fans of Britney as well and we love that Nicki Minaj is on the tour as well, because those girls are such prominent female pop stars (...) so it's very complimenting...

Hollywood Sentinel: Cool...

Nervo (Liv): It was great, and you know it was one day on, one day off, so what we did was play on The Britney Tour and then on the one day off we would go and play a club gig...

Hollywood Sentinel: Wow!

Nervo (Liv): Yeah it was incredible, I still can't believe we did it, and I can't believe it's over!

(laughs)

Nervo (Liv): It was so much fun!

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Hollywood Sentinel - Bruce Edwin: Well that's amazing, that's really really cool. I could talk with you both forever but I know there is a time crunch, so I just have a few more questions for you if that's cool...

Nervo (Liv): Yeah, go for it!

Hollywood Sentinel: The rave scene has gotten probably unfairly attacked in some ways. How do you see with the so called rave culture and dance music scene you are involved in, with being more or less dangerous than the rock and roll scene?

Nervo (Liv): Well we're from Australia, and I think the dance culture is very prominent and very there, I think in terms of the partying and...

Nervo (Mim): The drugs...

Nervo (Liv): ...the drug use affected around it all. I think rock concerts are ....I've been to rock concerts you know, and we love Pearl Jam and we love Green Day (...) it's just young teenage culture, and I think people have choices these days, and whether you're a rocker, a popper, a raver, or whatever, you know, everyone has those same choices, so I don't think you can really categorize it or pigeonhole certain genres, me definitely I don't.

Hollywood Sentinel - Bruce Edwin: I agree, I mean people talk about certain drugs being more prevalent at raves as such, but people are going to do what they want to do regardless of any music.

Nervo (Liv): Exactly. It is interesting to say...O.K., people do associate drugs with that certain kind of rave culture, but drugs sadly are popping up everywhere, in lots of different cultures, so we don't encourage it but we don't pigeonhole it either.

Hollywood Sentinel: Yeah.

Nervo (Liv): We're not gonna kind of say yes—definitely, the electronic scene is responsible for it ...

Nervo (Mim): I mean building awareness to that kind of thing is really good and actually I have seen at some kind of raves I have seen kind of awareness for 'don't do drugs' and things like that, which is really good, you know?

Hollywood Sentinel - Bruce Edwin: Really? That's cool, excellent. Well, is there anything else you would like to get out?

Nervo (Liv): We're just really excited about our new record that we've done with Astrelworks, our new one. We shot the video in California, in Van Neece? Is that how you say it? Van Nuys?

Hollywood Sentinel- Bruce Edwin: Van Nuys, but the way you say it is sexier (laughs).

Nervo (Liv): (laughs...extra sexy) vanNeece! (laughs) So yeah, we loved being in America, we love California so, we're so excited! We just did a record with Steve Aioki while we were on tour on the ID Tour...

Hollywood Sentinel - Bruce Edwin: Awesome...

Nervo (Liv): and (...) so we're really excited about that one, we've just got a lot going on and we really appreciate...

Nervo (Mim): ...the support...

Liv: ...you know, we appreciate the support, we really do.

Hollywood Sentinel - Bruce Edwin: Excellent, that's great. One final thought; when I first started working on the music industry there were about twenty major labels and then ten and now we're down to about four (actually now three) with all the major subsidiaries under them and stuff. What is your vision with Nervo Records and where you're headed? Do you want to keep reaching bigger and bigger crowds or stay more in the dance scene?

Nervo (Liv): I think the more people you can move with great music the better, but I don't think our aim would be to be like massively mainstream or anything like (that)...

Nervo (Mim): ...we just want to keep pushing boundaries creatively...

Nervo (Liv): ...yeah, keep creating and more importantly, keep having a good time with it...

Hollywood Sentinel - Bruce Edwin: Great. Well Liv and Mim, I really appreciate your time, it's really good speaking with you and I look forward to seeing you when you hit L.A.

Nervo (Liv): Yes you too! come to our show! We're playing with Afrojack on Sunday!

Hollywood Sentinel - Bruce Edwin: Excellent. I will look forward to seeing you, and thanks again.

Nervo: Thank you—bye-bye!

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