12 Limbs

... and Music with Teeth!

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

A band made up of three Russian dentists? We are sure there is a ‘three Russian dentists walk into a music venue ...’ joke in there somewhere, but don’t reach for the laughing gas just yet, because, er ... brace yourselves, 12 Limbs are really rather great!

Formed way back in 2003 (where else other than dental school?), this unique indie rock trio, who’s line-up consists of Ben (lead vocals / keyboards}; Art (guitar / bass) and Roman (drums) hail from Chelyabinsk, also known as ‘the meteor city’, and finally drilled in to the UK music scene two years ago.

Since the lockdown, Ben, Art and Roman have been entertaining fans by releasing new and original songs, with acommpanying videos, every month. Their latest single, ‘Memoirs’, released last November, is a call to arms to stand strong during these uncertain times. Their strongest single to date, ‘Memoirs’ is infinitely better than an unknown frothy pink substance in a papercup.

There were healthy smiles all round when we recently got in touch with Ben for an oral examination. In the following interview, he takes us back to 12 Limbs’ roots, gives us an insight into the band’s forthcoming debut album and tells us how 2021 is the year that the Russians are coming to make a tired old UK indie scene

decayed by last year’s relative inactivity spit out its dentures.

Firstly, hello Ben and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. Could we start by asking where, when and how 12 Limbs got together and could you introduce us to your members?

First of all we‘re happy to hear you liked our track! It was the beginning of our study in medical university ... we were studying in dental school. Roman sat next to me and played virtual drums with his pointing fingers on the table, while the professor left the classroom for a minute. That sparked our first conversation about our passion in music. That was back in 1999. The same year, we started rehearsing behind the scenes of the university main hall, and went on to win a local bands competition for students. Our band was called The Others and thinking back on that award winning diploma, it makes us smile, it meant so much to us then, but hold now power today. Three years later, we moved to Ekaterinburg for the final stage of our study. This city is famous for its rock bands - unlike Chelyabinsk. The progressive spirit of the big city inspired us to dream big about the music. We made our first record in the studio, and started jamming with local musicians. Searching for the permanent rehearsal space, we met Art, who worked as a sound engineer at the concert hall. He was a shy, small town

boy, obsessed with music. His multi-instrumental and producing skills brought us to an absolutely new level in making music. So our three piece got together in 2003. Some footage from those times is used in our video ‘In My Room’.

You hail from Chelyabinsk in Russia. As you are the first Russian band that we have featured, could you give us an introduction to your home city and its music scene?

There’s an image of Chelyabinsk as a ‘harsh’ city across Russia. Like Manchester in the UK, but without the glorious music scene. The steel industry, bad ecology and working class people shape the specific atmosphere there. The only famous band from the city emerged in the ‘70s. Ironically, the drummer of this band helped us to get on the local TV back in 2006. If we’re talking about modern Russian rock scene, Chelyabinsk has nothing to be proud of. We are doing our best to bring the fame to beloved city.

How do you feel that Chelyabinsk has shaped the sound and outlook of 12 Limbs and what other influences, musical or otherwise, have informed you as musicians?

When we started, we were inspired by the indie rock wave of mid 2000s. We covered Kings of Leon, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs and all that stuff trying to find our unique sound. It was at a time before the advent of social media and we could hardly get any real feedback from the people. After performing several shows, during which we sang a mixture of covers and our own original material, we realised the power of ‘word of mouth’ in the city. But it wasn’t enough to break somewhere else at those times.

We noticed you have been together for seventeen years. During this time, how have the band evolved into the band we know today and having recently been gaining a following in the UK, why do you feel that now is the right time for music fans over here to catch onto 12 Limbs?

Our band is like a long running TV series. We had the first season from 2003 to 2007, which ended up with nothing, for the reasons mentioned above. It was purely local activity at that time. In the final episode of it, we went to Moscow with demo CDs and visited all the record labels that existed in Russia at that time. They’ve shown no commercial interest at all in our music. The second season started in 2019, when all three of us found ourselves in Moscow. All the other musical projects that we’d been in had ended. We just had no people around who really wanted to go on with music. There were a few talented musicians out there, we tried to align with them, but for one reason or another, we couldn’t make things work. So we took a second chance at forming our own band and our old chemistry sparked immediately - being empowered with better musical skills ,we gained working with other musicians in between the two seasons.

Your latest single, ‘Memoirs’ is a warning about standing strong during the pandemic. Could you tell us a bit more about the idea behind the track?

Knowing our long story, you can imagine how mad we were to realise that we can’t play live anywhere in the world this year. Even the trendiest people in the industry admitted that online gigs suck, and a live show is impossible to recreate in any other way. Spending 2019 writing the tracks, we planned to start live activity in the spring of 2020. We felt as if we were being hoaxed by some evil powers (and they can be named), cursed and robbed by the destiny. So the track was born out of despair.

‘Memoirs’ also leads us to ask, how have the band coped both personally and professionally during these unprecedented times?

We concentrated on creating new stuff like all the other artists are being forced to do right now. Building our following is our primarily purpose at the moment. Traditionally, rock bands would build

their fan base by playing as many live gigs as they could. And that was our plan as well. We were ready for the road musically and physically. The internet was flooded with so much musical content by aspiring and successful artists, long before the pandemic. Now it’s a tsunami of new music as artists have nothing to do but record. Rock music isn’t really a genre that’s ever gone viral online, it can hardly compete there with rap, pop and electro. All these thoughts lead us to the decision to concentrate more than we planned on visuals.

During the course of the pandemic, you have been releasing new and original songs each month, complete with accompanying videos. Could you tell us a bit about the tracks that you have released aside from ‘Memoirs’ and are there any plans to compile them on a physical format at some point?

Suffering from the lack of live shows, we filmed a live performance of five tracks in August. We picked the tracks that show the full scale of our genre spectrum. We are to release the next video from this pack called ‘Understand’, which reminisces on good-old Oasis-ish britpop, enriched with live strings section. We have the pure commercial pop rock sound of the song ‘Anesthesia’, we change to semi-acoustic, yet unreleased ‘Waterloo’. The fifth video is ‘Millions of Miles’, which represents our indie electro direction of evolution.

We are also told that your debut album is planned for 2021. What can we expect from it?

The most comfortable number of the tracks in the album of 12 Limbs is … 13. We can guarantee this baker’s dozen (in Russia we call it devil’s dozen) won’t sound like one long song. We hate to write even two tracks people can confuse with each other. There goes the process of finding the balance between traditional rock stuff, that still influences us from 2000s, and modern electro based indie tracks. So there’ll be a gentle blend of the last twenty years of musical history. Thanks to the pandemic, we keep writing new tracks and there is plenty of choices.

Could you give us an insight into the usual writing and recording process of a 12 Limbs song?

In most cases, it starts with a short catchy piece of melody, accompanied by guitar or piano, written by one of the band members. Then we develop it to the full-scale track with pseudo-English or mumbling vox, at our home studio. We get the atmosphere of the track at this stage. Listening to this demo, I write the actual lyrics later. Usually, it happens on the planes. After recording the new demo with the lyrics for three or four tracks, I go to a London-based studio, sometimes accompanied by Roman or Art. There, I work with my

English production team, polishing the lyrics and vocals. Returning to Moscow with the finished vocal tracks, the band mix and master the song.

You are known to switch instruments mid-performance. How important is the members’ ability to be able to play a range of instruments to the sound of 12 Limbs both on record and on stage and for those who have never witnessed one of your live shows, what can they expect?

If a man can swim, he can swim in any waters. We have to change the instruments because the songs we write are quite different and demand various colours. Lately we bought a ‘comb’, that’s what we called a keytar. Ben used it to play solo parts in a number of tracks. We love the powerful way our songs sound live. In a perfect world, we would record tracks in the big studio fully live.

As ‘Memoirs’ is very much a song about fighting back amidst the current situation the world has found itself in, what do you feel that musicians and others in the music industry need to do in order to ensure that the music scene returns to full strength once we return to some sort of normality?

Unfortunately, there’s not much can be done from the side of the industry. Once the restrictions are lifted, it will reсover quickly. But no one can guarantee they will be lifted forever and never comes back. Planning for long tours a year upfront should be forgotten, we believe. The industry has to act quick, organizing big shows in shorter periods of time - and spontaneously. Otherwise, there will be a constant risk of losses in case the virus comes back. See you on our live show whenever and wherever it will happen!

Thank you for a wonderful interview. We wish you all the best for 2021 and the future.

‘Memoirs’ is out now on Right Track / Universal Records.

www.12limbs.com

www.facebook.com/ 12limbsband