Trans-Atlas

Trans-Atlas began its maiden voyage with PILOT, a full length LP spanning 28 minutes, written in one week, and recorded in one day.

In the wake of an unfocused musical venture, Joshua Rex, an artist by trade, began penning PILOT (named because it is a debut record, not after the controller of an aircraft) in May 2009, starting with ‘The Great War’, the album’s first track. From here he continued until there were ten songs, listed on record in the same order in which they were written.

“I wanted to write something really immediate, and quite heavy. The direct, aggressive nature of the tracks reflects my mood at the time of writing. Approaching the age of thirty, I decided it was time to do work that I felt naturally inclined to, rather than what I thought I should be writing. It felt like a call to arms, and thus ended up being about War, spanning several eras, and the mental and physical remnants left to us after it is over.”

After he had the rough outlines of 10 songs, he called his old schoolmate Benjamin F.

“Benjamin has always had an inclination to aggressive music. He’s an incredibly gifted and hard hitting drummer, and I realized this would be the perfect opportunity to showcase both of our strengths together in one concentrated musical venture. I just called him and said ‘are you interested in playing some heavy music?’ and he said ‘you bet’.”

Trans-Atlas began a rigorous two month rehearsal period, with a date set to record the record on September 22, 2009.

“We knew we wanted to move on this project, to cement a date and make the record without dithering around and thinking about it too much. We wanted to keep that energy going.”

They chose Tangerine Sounds Studios in Akron, Ohio- home of Patrick Carney (The Black Keys) label Audio Eagle Records- to record the album. PILOT was recorded in one day by Ben Vehorn (Love as Laughter, Drummer, Royal Bangs), and remixed the following week in a day as well.

“Ben Vehorn understood exactly what we wanted. We had recorded in several studios in the past and no one had understood the basic principles we were going for: big drums, big vocals, and guitar as it sounds coming out of the amp.”

Trans-Atlas will release PILOT in limited edition packaging on December 19, 2009 and hope to find a home for the record in the coming months.

“The goal of this band is to write the music that is in our hearts and tour it as much as possible. We settled on the name Trans-Atlas specifically because of our collective wanderlust and the inspiration we both derive from travel. We hope to find a label that embraces bands as works of art themselves, continually evolving and changing and growing, and is willing to back them through these ventures. We want to record more than just heavy music. Maybe a French dance record…”