You’d be hard-pressed to find any DJ in the emerging dance music world that isn’t down with Nina Las Vegas. Her weekly Saturday night radio show on Australia’s Triple J plays home to cutting edge dance music from around the globe, with everyone from Claude VonStroke to Brodinski to DJ Dodger Stadium stopping by her studio to play their new tunes. But after years of DJing, radio hosting, and some dabbling in hip hop and remix production, Nina Las Vegas has teamed up with buzzing producer, Swick, for her first-ever official release — the two-track Don’t Send EP out today via Nest.
Comprised of a pair of thumping, high-octane bruisers, Don’t Send backs up Nina’s longstanding support of unique club music, and her shared tastes with the eclectic Swick made for a chemistry-filled collaboration that appears to be a launching point for Nina’s fruitful production career ahead.
Last week, I hopped on Skype to have a quick URL chat with both Nina and Swick just before they headed into the studio to work on some more tunes ahead of their big NLV presents tour kicking off this Friday in Perth. Read our chat below and make sure to pick up Don’t Send for free via Nest.
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Hi guys. So your big tour is coming up next week. How’s everything looking going into that? Any stops you’re particularly excited about?
Nina: I’m so excited. It’s a massive risk for me because it’s not what people expected, especially since my last tours have been with Flume, What So Not, Wave Racer… and all the rest of the ‘Australian Sound’ gang (not that I use that term). I just really wanted to work with people that I want my audience to know… you see, our scene is massive but there are not enough kids taking in DJs or Producers as curators…not just playing what that know they are going to do…which is very easy to do right now.
So Perth is first, which is what I am most excited about…the whole gang will be there together the day before and it’s close to selling out…will be a good start!
That’s great! The lineup that you put together is pretty diverse too, sound wise. Are you trying to showcase a little bit of everything that you’re into? How’d you go about picking those folks?
Nina: Well I really wanted to do an all female lineup and I love how smart Eclair’s sets are. And UNIIQU3 and I have become pretty tight online pals for about a year after I hit her up because everyone was dropping her edits in my radio mixes.
I quickly scrapped the all girl thing because I felt it was smarter to just book cool girls (not focus on it). Sam and I have been friends for a while. I love seeing him play and I actually think we have really similar tastes… his mixes sometimes feel like I’ve made them. And Swick… well I was running all the ideas though my crew of friends here like Emoh, Wavey, Swick… I was always asking them who they would want to see. So yehhh voila!
So you guys are the hometown heroes on this tour. Is there anything special you’re planning to do with the international folks (outside of the shows) or anything you gotta show them?
Nina: I’m Sydney-based and Danny is from Melbourne. UNIIQU3 wants to go to the zoo, so we’ll do that in Perth. Eclair has family in Aus so she is arriving a little earlier to hang. Sam knows a bunch of us…him and Danny are also bros.
The weather in sydney is WILD right now — like 28.
I’m so bad at converting Celsius…
Nina: I don’t know what that is in your conversion. It’s hot. Like really early summer vibes. Water is still really cold, but it’s shorts in the club time.
Ah and we’re just heading out of that here…
Nina: Yehhh but Sydney and LA are pretty similar. Except we get rain.
Ya none of that here. But back to you guys. Nina these are your first productions right? How has it been transitioning into a producer role?
Nina: No, I’ve actually worked on remixes before.
Ah my bad I meant originals…
Nina: Ohh yeh. But it has been cool, the transition. I used to make a lot of Hip Hop for Heaps Decent in workshops. Really sample-based cause we’d be in school rooms.
But after I came home from a mini break (3 months away) I went to part time and pretty much spent every moment coming up with ideas. Nothing finished, just heaps and heaps of loops and patterns. Danny put out his Full Court EP which I thought was amazing and I hit him up asking what he used. And when he replied just samples and a microKorg, I asked him to make me a folder full of sounds.
He sent them over and I started playing with them, and then I asked him if working together would be something he was down for. So I went to his house and it worked!
Plus I could play soccer…
Swick: Yeah Nina is really sick at soccer. She scored a hat trick.
Nina: We’d known each other for a while but never really hung. We both realized that we had really similar tastes. Danny liked the weirder parts in my ideas, like bad drum compression…
Haha that’s great. Danny you have a bunch of crazy sounds in your productions and they seem to differ from release to release but they all have a very Swick vibe. What’s your process like finding sounds for your tunes?
Swick: I dunno I just like anything that is cool and weird…
What’s the weirdest song you’ve made?
Swick: Mmmmm that’s out? Some of the tracks with Douster on the Internet Dreams EP are kinda weird. All the tracks on that are kinda weird and have a weird story for each other one. I don’t wanna talk too much about that though.
Fair enough.
Swick: Maybe 56k desert connection is the weirdest one…it’s a story about a dude trying to stream the last game of the Barclays Premier League in 2012 from the desert and it keeps fucking up for him and then he just goes mad…
Nina: LOL I didn’t know that. But I get it. Soccer is a big theme for us. I am now a Chelsea supporter, and the first time Danny came to Sydney we went to a Juventus game.
Swick: Yeah Nina loves Salah. We just got her a jersey actually.
So you guys have a bunch of tracks together though other than “Don’t Send” and “Flash Auto” ya?
Nina: Heaps. Our next concern in the tour cause now we pretty much have all the same tunes. We’ll have to work out what’s fair, who gets to play what.
Ahh interesting. Any b2b’s planned?
Nina: Danny came to one of my gigs a few weeks ago. And we do the same mix of club and rap, but where I get a bit trappy he plays Techno. So it could work and be really cool.
Nina how close are your DJ sets to what you play on the radio?
Nina: So I’m getting closer and closer to what I air on Mix Up Exclusives and what I play out. These parties were kinda planned to showcase my real taste, but I go pretty hard in my radio sets. So people expect it now (a little more).
Swick: Yeah your sets gee me up
Nina: The truth is, I still like a lot of obvious stuff, so if I have to get the crowd back I will drop something older. It’s pretty tough out here in AUS right now. We’re a bit stagnant, and the scene is super young.
What seems to be coming up?
Nina: Swick, Tkay…
Swick: Lucid
Nina: The Motorik Vibes Council crew threw great parties and some of their releases are super tough. The Melbourne guys are pushing cool shit too like Air Max 97. Even Victoria Kim from Sydney. There is quite a lot of love for the Dro Carey, Cassius Select, Moon Holiday, and Oscar Key Sung gang, internationally especially, but Trap / ‘ADM’ is still kinda ruling, which I’m not hating on. Just looking forward to it spreading out a bit.
OK last question super easy – current mood in the form of emoji
Nina: omg. Never not #smirk
Swick: [Skype Ninja emoji]
Hahaha I had a feeling you’d go with that one Nina. Thanks for the chat guys and good luck on the tour!
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Catch Nina and Swick on the NLV present International Edition tour kicking off this Friday, and keep up via the links below for more info on the rest of their collab tunes they have upcoming!
Nina Las Vegas
Soundcloud
Facebook
Twitter
Swick
Soundcloud
Facebook
Twitter
The post Nina Las Vegas & Swick Chat Tunes, Tour, and the Australian Music Scene appeared first on NEST HQ.