Written by Claudia Sarne and Atticus Ross
Written by Claudia Sarne and Atticus Ross
Written by Claudia Sarne and Atticus Ross
Originally recorded in London with
Ben Hillier at the controls & Kirk Hellie on guitar
Additional recording with Trent Reznor at Nothing Studios
Song downloads are linked from archive.org
12 Rounds – Xocet
12 Rounds is a British trip-hop and Industrial / alternative rock band formed in the mid-1990s by producer Atticus Ross and vocalist Claudia Sarne, who later became his wife. Initially a trio with guitarist Adam Holden, the group debuted under the name “12 Rounds With Jesus” on an NME promotional cassette before shortening their name to 12 Rounds. Their first album, Jitter Juice (1996), released on Polydor Records, blended raw punk energy with electronic textures, leading to tours with Sneaker Pimps and appearances at UK festivals like Reading.
12 Rounds - Claudia Sarne & Atticus Ross preforming live in the 90s
#12rounds #12roundsband #atticusross#claudiasarne
Album: Personally EP (1996) Director: Chris Cunningham Label: Polydor Taken from the 12 Rounds Promo Showreel VHS ------
The show was at a small bar on the east side of Cleveland called the Grog Shop. 12 Rounds was opening for VAST. It wasn’t a huge turnout, but maybe about 30-35 people in the whole place. The majority was there to see 12 Rounds though, and many left soon after their set. They used a 4 piece band, sometimes with three guitars and more of the time with the additional guitarist moving to the keyboard. Claudia also played guitar on a couple numbers. I can’t remember the exact set, but all of the songs were from My Big Hero save one. The setlist (not in exact order, and maybe missing a song or two) : Something’s Burning, Sunshine, Come on in…, , My Big Hero, Bovine, and a sped up, guitar-ish version of Me Again. Mr. Johnson… and Where Fools Go were not played. The unknown song I assume is from Jitter Juice, but not having heard that disc, I can’t be sure. Pleasant Smell and Sunshine were my personal two favorites of the show, mainly because of how much emotion and energy Claudia put into both. They do have 12 Rounds t-shirts available with them, black shirts with the 12 Rounds logo (at the top of your page) in white. They also have a white version with a black logo. I went to pick up a black shirt after the show and Atticus Ross gave me one for free. :P I talked to him briefly, and he was very cool and personable. He asked if I liked the show, which i told him I did, and he said it was good to be so far away from home and find people liking your music. He also said most of the people over in England don’t really like them. :P I asked about Nothing, and he said Polydor wanted to re-sign them, but their time ran out, and Nothing came along and offered them a deal, and they couldn’t have hoped for more. He also asked if I was in a band, which I’m not, because I have *no* real musical talent whatsoever, to which he replied he didn’t have any either. There was also plenty of 12 Rounds promo posters all over the walls of the club, which I grabbed. They’re enlarged versions of the cover art to MBH. VAST played afterwards, and weren’t really that bad at all, but a couple of the songs seemed to blend into one another.
Definitely a good show, and I’d certainly pay to see’em again next time they come through.
Special thanks to Mike Novak
Although currently championed by Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor, who signed the band to his Nothing label, the British duo 12 Rounds was originally signed to Polydor and began as a trio. Although the debut, Jitter Juice, sold well enough to lead to a series of festival appearances back home and an extensive tour with friends the Sneaker Pimps, the band — Atticus Ross and Claudia Sarne — was ultimately dropped by Polydor. They used the downtime productively and recorded an album’s worth of material in the summer of 1997 in their studio basement. When Reznor heard the tapes, he signed them immediately, and eventually put out Big Hero in June 1998, with a world tour to follow. Besides 12 Rounds, the pair has worked with others as well, such as a collaboration with Bomb the Bass, and production credits that include Barry Adamson’s As Above So Below and a new band called No Jahoda. ~ Greg Prato, All-Music Guide
12 rounds:My Big Hero
rate:Enthusiastically Endorsed
Death and sex, the two star topics on the evening news,figure just as highly on this album from 12 Rounds. No topic is safe from the reach of the band’s darkly moving morbidity, or invulnerable to the lure of singer Claudia Sarne’s drawl. With a voice sharpened by clove cigarettes,Sarne leads partner Atticus Ross’ thick trip-hop constructions around by the necktie, attracting the inner aggressor with dark rhythms flecked by specks of light.
“Don’t breathe on me when you’re full of alcohol,” Sarne tensely warns on the spacey Old West stage of “Pleasant Smell”, it’s here that the first real signs of trouble appear.Dreams that girls good or bad aren’t supposed to have follow on “My Big Hero,” Sarne indulgently muses,”there i sit upon his head/Cool water at my feet/Drowned his face and crushed his neck/And loving every scream.” Throwaway songs like “Sunshine,” along with the virtually unrelenting doom that pervades this CD,can be a drag.But here and there is an upbeat step, an unwinding bass guitar or a gorgeous turn, and always the fascination behind Sarne’s powerful vocal expressions.
Interview:
12 ROUNDS
LOCATE,SUBVERT,IMPLICATE
Claudia Sarne doesn’t shy away from implications,however ugly. And it’s hard not to think of those creepy,grainy photos of smiling high schoolers who’ve just blown away a significant percentage of their classmates when one hears the name of her band,12 Rounds.
Sarne has somewhat of a gift for creating distressing implications. “Put me in your juicer/Come drink me,” she pleads on “Bovine,” the creepy, grainy track 12 Rounds Nothing Records debut,My Big Hero.But with this group,implictions conceal as much as they reveal. Sarne and partner Atticus Ross are British, and disturbed teens picking up Uncle Bubba’s shotgun for a little people-hunting is more of an American pastime.
“The name of the band came from one of the first things Atticus and I did together, a song called “12 Rounds of Jesus,” Sarne says from her cell phone as she walks around New York City. “We weren’t at the the point looking to work together,but it just sort of happened.”
Ross had built up a long resume in the electronic/club scene with such projects as Bomb the Bass; but again implications conceal and reveal.My Big Hero has a density that cries out,Written piece by piece in the studio.
“Not at all,” Sarne says,firmly but pleasantly-but firmly all the same. “In fact,all the songs were written on a piano or on a guitar. What happens after that”- her voice melts into traffic noise.
“I’m not really into digital sounds-most of what we used were organic or organic-based,” Ross says later from an outdoor restaurant. “My outlook is more a mix of traditionalism and, sort of,millennium thinking.The record isn’t one-sided,you know there’s more to it.”
That is, of course, one of Ross’ sly understatements: My Big Hero is a maze of misdirection, most of it pleasant.The industrial repution of Trent Reznor’s Nothing Records,which plans to release NIN remixs of the single “Pleasant Smell” is soon tempered by the twisted Delta dread of “Where Fools go,” which samples Nick Cave and Conjures PJ harvey’s to Bring you my Love. And although rhythm textures that recall Massive Attack or Tricky abound, the album is awash in discordent and aggressive post-punk guitar and shaped by Sarne’s voice-which at least one critic has aptly described as “Eartha Kitt on crack.”
“You just know when something fits,” Sarne says. “I’ve never really defined myself as rock or electronic or whatever,one thing or the other.Anything that as any kind soul I like.”
But even if no gun metaphors are implied in the realm of 12 Rounds,there are still some weapons. When Sarne and Ross work out their music in the studio,there can be…disagreements.
“We have terrific rows,” Sarne admits. “neither of us is afraid to say what we think.” A pause. “But that doesn’t surprise you about me,now does it?”
Dynamic trip-hop duo converges opposing styles to come out with a strangely dark sound on upcoming LP.
Contributing Editor Teri vanHorn reports:
LOS ANGELES — Claudia Sarne and Atticus Ross are sitting in bungalow # 4 of the legendary Chateau Marmont Hotel, discussing their forthcoming June release under the band name 12 Rounds.
But the duo are not just talking about an album, they’re describing the origins of a living thing. And suddenly it’s clear why My Big Hero begins with the steady sound of a heartbeat.
“It became a direct result of the two of us marrying what I do and what Atticus does together, and this thing was born,” vocalist Sarne says of the mix of moods and the teeter-taw of mediums that comprise the LP, due out in June. “It physically felt like giving birth — we almost had to name her, but we didn’t go that far.
Carrying both organic and electronic traits, the album’s erotic, trip-hop blues is clearly a product of its eclectic parents.
Ross attributes the album’s provocative, predominately dark feel to his darker sensibilities, making it sound like a demonically possessed child. Sarne “created a sort-of malicious character,” he says. “I think that a lot of girls sing from the ‘I’m-so-wronged’ perspective, and not many sing from the ‘I’m-capable-of-doing-wrong’ perspective. That’s the irony, I think — the mood’s kind-of dark, but it doesn’t wear the pain as though we were on our cross.”
Dressed for a photo shoot, Sarne, 28, is wearing a black dress with hot-pink fishnet stockings. At the moment, she is weirdly beautiful, with her short, black hair slicked back and chartreuse-green eye shadow entirely encompassing her blue eyes. “I don’t usually look like this,” she says in an apologetic tone.
The 29-year-old Ross, however, looks more earthly, dressed in black pants and a gray, button-down shirt. The Londoners are in Los Angeles for a quick visit and some media exposure as they search for a director for the album’s first video, the arresting “Come On In Out of the Rain”.
Formerly a trio, 12 Rounds had limited exposure through Polydor before Sarne and Ross, who are romantic partners as well, decided to become a duo in 1996. “You had to be much more democratic in a three-piece, and you get some pretty weird dynamics when there’s two girls and a guy,” Sarne said. “It’s an old thing that triangles just don’t work, and for us, it was true. It started out pretty well, and then it just degenerated. None of us were growing as artists, or musicians, or programmers, so one of us had to fall by the wayside.”
Jeff Anderson, who signed the duo to Nothing Records, said My Big Hero realizes the potential he felt for the band when he first heard 12 Rounds as a trio. “The minute I heard them, I completely fell in love with their music,” he says while stocking the fridge to prepare for the duo’s party that night. “As I got the new music, my gut feeling about them was confirmed.”
My Big Hero’s potential success might lie in that it crosses over the warmer, organic sounds and the more cutting edge of electronica while never pushing either sound too far. “We put equal emphasis on the programmed side as the live,” Ross says. “The treatment of the guitar is like, use a guitar and keep it a guitar. I don’t like it when a song records a guitar and then processes it until it doesn’t sound like what it is anymore. We let the electronics and the string section exist each in their own right, but no song is one or the other.”
When it comes to the album’s use of unusual instruments, such as the chainsaw that cuts through “Bovine” and the fly that buzzes around on “Something’s Burning,” Ross is a bit more vague. “It just felt like it needed it,” he says.
Ross and Sarne talk about My Big Hero as though it were a dramatic test of faith. “It was literally like looking at a fucking sea, and saying, ‘I know I can get to the other side of that, but I don’t know how to get to the other side of that,” Sarne says, pointing and squinting as she stares in the distance.
For Sarne, building that bridge became a matter of gaining confidence — while losing a little self-consciousness. “At the beginning I was scrutinizing everything so closely and I wasn’t feeling confident about my writing,” she says. “About midway through, we both kind of said ‘fuck it’ and let go a bit, and that’s how it all came together.”
Many of the lyrics were written almost subliminally, with Sarne letting them come to her in a stream of consciousness as she sang. But a lot of that inspiration, she adds, comes from suffering and loss of direction. “You know, when you loosen your control on the reign a tiny bit — just enough so you can still feel the pull — you can take a step forward without being paralyzed by your own fear, without confining yourself to the things that you know. I don’t think that any growth is born out of not having any pain.”
