Nervo, well played games

There aren’t many who can call David Guetta their brother and get away it, unless of course, you’ve won a Grammy together, like the Nervo sisters, Mim and Liv Nervo have. The Melbourne-born twin sisters have been creeping on to the collective consciousness of dance fans the world over, ever since co-writing the grammy-award winning hit, When Love Takes Over with David Guetta and Kelly Rowland.

As a songwriting powerhouse, the two have penned tracks for the biggest names in pop, including the likes of Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears, Ke$ha and The Pussycat Dolls. On their own, the girls have put out club-chart topping tracks with a list of collaborators that reads like a who’s who in dance music, including Armin Van Buuren, Afrojack and Steve Aoki. Their DJ sets from Vegas to Ibiza are said to be electric and have kept the critics raving.
On the eve of their Australian tour and appearance at Summadayze, Mim talks to Future about their latest single, We’re All No-One and upcoming projects with none other than LMFAO and Avicii.

When was the last time you two were in Australia?
Too long ago. So long, around a year ago.

Where are you based at the moment?
We’re based in London. Even though we travel a lot, London is pretty much our second home.

You and Liv started out in the modeling business, what made you go no, lets focus on music?
Well, modeling happened because we were twins, and we were these lanky, long, blonde things. I wouldn’t say modeling was a career or anything like that, it was just something that got us out of working in Nandos. Music was always really the focus and the priority. The good thing about the few very early years of modeling is that it taught us a little bit about how to move in front of the camera. It’s hard to look good in photos and know how to work the camera a little bit. I’m still learning.

What kind of music grabbed when you were growing up, in terms of who you were listening to?
When I was a teenager I would listen to whatever was on Rage and Video Hits. I was into popular music half the time. My parents are great, they’ve always encourage a wide range of music. It ranged from Cole Porter to classical to rock’n’roll, the Gypsy Kings and World Music. I would say our parents have enriched us with many different types of music genres.
Liv was a real rock n’roll girl. She loved the whole Seattle, Nirvana movement. She loved Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, R.E.M, and all that rock music. I loved more of the Chemical Brothers and Basement Jaxx. I loved Underworld.

When did you first figure out, yes, we can write songs together?
I guess we always used to write songs. We would never construct them into a three-minute-thirty pop record. We would just write lyrics and melodies and jam out together. The way we worked half the time was playing these games. Little did we know these games were called songwriting. We started professionally writing records at 19 years old.

What’s your creative process like now? Do you have to be in the same room to work together, or can you work on bits and pieces solo? Do you still play those games?
We always like to be in the same room, especially when we are doing the jam. The jam is really important, because it also does depend on your mood. When we are both on a roll in the jam, it just keeps getting better and better. Often to flesh out an idea we’ll do the initial jam and get the initial ideas out but then when it comes to refining them and producing them, , I’ll ask Liv to leave me alone for two hours while I work on a line or a riff, and then she’ll come back and she’ll work on it, and we’ll comment.

Do you disagree a lot?
All the time (laughs). I think the way it works is that we constantly disagree until we agree. And when we agree, and we are both going crazy over something, we know we are on to something good.

What needs to be present in a potential track for you to take it on? Do you have a formula in what you look for?
I think with us, it changes all the time. Sometimes it’s a really good drum loop, or sometimes it can be a bass line, sometimes it can be a riff. I always feel like as long as you can feel a strong emotion when you’re hearing it, when you’re jamming it, then you’ve got sometime work with. If you don’t feel any emotion, in the chords, in the bass line, or even in the dirty kick, then of course it’s a dead end road. We always try to put the emotion into it first.

On your new single, We’re All No-One, you worked with Afrojack and Steve Aoki. What was it like hearing your own vocals instead of someone else’s in the final product?
We didn’t intend on being the final vocalists on the record. We just literally put the vocals down so that we could write it and then arrange it. It was never the intention. But then we found the vocal stamped out a certain sound, and we ended up going with it and people liked it. Our label liked it, and we were like oh gosh, we better give it a go. And so far, the reception has been good. It’s so nerve racking – we’ve worked on vocals with Kylie Minogue, and laid down vocals before she does, and the same with the Pussycat Dolls - but to actually have your own vocals out there and for people to critique them, is the scarier thing.

Can we expect a new album out soon?
Yes, we have our next single coming out just before the WMC (World Music Conference) in Miami, and we’ve done that with Avicii. It’s amazing. I love the record, it’s really uplifting but deep at the same time. We were actually working on it today, and then we have a club record coming out again just before WMC, that’s called Army, and features Omarion (B2K), which will be coming out on Strictly Records. Then we’ve got our own record through Astral Records that we’ll be vocals on, but we do really want to keep releasing clubbier more underground stuff.
We’ve also just done a record with LMFAO and Steve Aoki and that is coming out in January. It’s Steve Aoki, featuring LMFAO and Nervo. It’s great, it’s a big party anthem. Those boys are great, they bring a lot of energy, so it’s very different to anything in Nervo land.

What are your goals for 2012? You’ve worked with some of the biggest producers around, where do you want to see yourselves this year?
Always doing music, always. I want to be in the studio more. I love working in the studio. David Guetta is amazing, we’re on his current album, we’re on his last album, he’s our brother. So I want to keep being able to work with those people. We used to just be studio rats, and our gigging was just once a month. But now we’re touring, so it’s a different thing. So next year I hope is the year where we release some great records, but I also want to put aside a bit more time for the studio.
We’re also playing at Creamfields with Fatboy Slim in Brazil in January. That’s really exciting, we’ve never been to Brazil and we’re doing a mini-Brazil tour.
We’re going to be in Ibiza a lot next year. We’re going to be living on the island for three months. We’re basing ourselves there and doing a lot of gigs in Europe. We’ve got our residency in Vegas, so we’ll still be ducking over to Vegas every six weeks, but it’s going to be wild, because this year we did Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj in America, so I think next year, we will have more of a European summer, we’ll be playing more in Europe.

What can we expect to hear in your set at Summadayze, and in your own shows on the Australian tour?
Amazing new music. We play a lot of our own stuff these days, but we’ll be playing a lot of new stuff and a lot of our own stuff. It will be big vocals, powerful and uplifting with lots of energy, I hope. There will definitely be lots of energy.
I love the Aussie crowds because Australians are really ahead when it comes to music and you need to be on your game. You need to be playing all the brand new records, you can’t play the ones that everybody knows, Aussie’s don’t like that. They like new stuff. It’s a dream playing in Australia.