NERVO Rallies Against the Sync Button
With their new album in stores this month, the sibling DJ duo say “no” to automated mixing
It’s almost a part of a DJ’s job description to criticize other DJs. After all, they are your competition. As the joke goes, “How many DJ’s does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Ten. One to do the job, nine others to say how much better they could do it.” With the recent stateside influx of electronic dance music acts invading the clubs over the last few years, riding in tow has been a band of funk-fakers using all-in-one units that literally allow you to “just hit play” with little or no control over the music. These units are unlike a turntable or Pioneer CDJ, which allow the user more control with the ability to literally “touch” the music by winding the platter back and forth. Sure, these machines will automatically “blend” two songs together for you, but it might not sound pretty, as the tech will sometimes make a jumbled, chaotic sound known as a “trainwreck” when trying to force feed it two songs that just don’t go together.
With so many EDM DJs breaking into the nightclub and festival scenes, the genre has drawn its fair share of criticism for these acts that ultimately don’t do anything up there. As my Cuepoint compatriot Jon Shecter once put so eloquently, DJing has become more like a dance contest, in which the headliner is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to rhythmically move around the area of the DJ booth and fling their arms wildly to the beat.
I admit, when sister DJ duo NERVO first stepped around 2010, I was looking at them with a bit of a cocked eyebrow. I had seen my share of dance music producers put the cart before the horse, with a trial-by-fire method of taking DJ gigs because they had a big hit record, without knowing how to DJ. These types would come into the club, brandishing all-in-one DJ units or would simply use the Ableton computer program to mix, without having to touch any part of the mixer, turntables, or CDJs at any time during their set.
In 2012, I opened for NERVO on a few different occasions. Naturally after seeing so many big name DJs resort to using these “training wheels” to perform, I just assumed the two DJs/models would do the same. As I finished my set, one of the ladies asked if I would set the song I was mixing out of to 128 BPM. They then plugged their flashdrive into one of the CDJ’s and began to DJ on the units, without the automated mixing assistance from hardware or a sync button. “Damn, they are really using the equipment,” I thought. Sure, they weren’t doing any Q-Bert scratching or DJ AM-esque power-mixing, but they were clearly familiar with the equipment. As much as I hated to admit it, I was proven wrong.
“We can’t use the sync button,” the golden-locked Liv of NERVO told me when I spoke to them earlier this month, not before her sister could complete the thought.
“The sync button scares me because you are not relying on your ear, you are relying on technology. It’s too scary,” said Mim, who rocks a wild hairstyle not unlike a troll doll, except really tall, slender and good-looking.
“I tried to use it once and it messed up in my set, so I am so scared of it,” Liv adds.
“And if you are using acapellas, the sync button does not work with acapellas. It doesn’t work on live mash-ups, so it’s just a dangerous tool,” chimes in Mim.
When you pull back and look at the whole package of NERVO — two statuesque blonde twin sisters that sing, model and DJ — it’s easy to assume they are just a manufactured act without any real musical talent. Yet their background suggests otherwise. The two started their career as ghostwriters for acts like Ke$ha, The Pussycat Dolls, and Britney Spears, each of whom the aforementioned description might be a little more apt.
“We started writing songs and we really loved it. We were in high school, but running off at any spare opportunity to get to the studio,” says Liv.
But eventually they took an interest in producing electronic music.
“We were studying music, but you couldn’t really study digital music back then. We were studying classical music,” Mim says.
“Then we did a course in Logic at [London] School of Sound in Angel in Islington, and that kind of opened up our world to more electronic beats, because we were always starting with a guitar or a piano riff, so this allowed us to explore more conventional songwriting and more exciting sounds,” explains Liv.
She continues, “We started experimenting with sounds and loving electronic music more, and then we went to Ibiza and it changed our lives and shaped us. We found ourselves grinding on day-to-day, 10-til-10 studio sessions, and then going to clubs and listening to underground music on the weekends.”
They broke through after scoring a big hit in 2009 with David Guetta’s Kelly Rowland assisted smash, “When Love Takes Over.”
“[David Guetta] wasn’t big then, he’d never had a number one. He was popping, but was definitely not commercial like he is now. Writing ‘When Love Takes Over’ was a really fun moment, says Mim. “We wanted to work with DJs more than pop stars.”
With the release of their new album Collateral this past week, NERVO does just that, collaborating with the likes of Avicii, Afrojack, Steve Aoki, Fred Falke, R3hab, and Nicky Romero on the record. They also recorded two tracks with Nile Rodgers, one which appears on Collateral, and one soon to be released on his next record.
“We’ve done something for Nile on his Chic album. We’ve done a few different ideas for him. I guess he’s going to decide when that comes out,” says Mim. “He’s a ‘ledge’. There’s a reason as to why a man like that has been in the industry that long, he’s just professional and awesome.”
With DJing being a male dominated sport, it was easy to make incorrect assumptions about NERVO. However it does raise the question if there is a gender-equality issue in the world of five and six figure electronic DJs.
“Nobody really knows what anybody makes. There’s a lot of talk and speculation,” says Mim. “If I believe what I hear, then I believe that the boys are making a lot more money than the girls. But you know what…?”
“…we were broke waitresses six years ago, so to even have our flights covered for gigs is still a high for us,” finishes Liv.
“Maybe it should bother us a bit more if we were really on the equality thing — which we are — but at the same time, you just have to put your head down and keep working.”
Concluding my conversation with them, I decided to follow them to their album release party at Omnia Nightclub and listen to their set. Would I be let down? Had the sisters moved to an all-in-one controller to mix? Had they resorted to using the sync button?
I watched as they performed together, hyping up the crowd with lots of mic work and high-energy EDM bangers. Standing directly behind them, I kept a close eye on the mixer and the dual CDJ units. Sure enough, as one song ended, the CDJ it was playing on blinked red, as it should. And on the mixer, the volume level on channel 2 began to lower when the one on channel 3 began to light up. Thankfully, these two are still really doing it, which is a lot more than one could say about many of the other festival headliners that they share billing with. This small detail that many do not even see says a lot about their dedication to their craft, in whatever form it takes. I’m reminded of something Mim said earlier in the evening.
“We’re just happy to be here. Every day we pinch ourselves, again and again and again.”
What do you think? Please log in and respond below.
