Atlas Before: a ‘band’ by any other name, is still a band.
“With an eclectic mix of recorded music reflecting various styles and genres, the core is still a very solid rock, that is perhaps best shone in its reflexive and thoughtful setting.”
“The good news is, the recordings and videos are technically getting better. The bad news is, the songs are getting worse. LOL”
“But luckily,” quips Dave, “we still have a bunch of songs written way back when we were still creative, that have still never been recorded.”
Atlas Before is an assembly of thoughtful and talented creatives…
Background and History of Atlas Before
Atlas Before features the music primarily written by its founding member, David Denton. While many of the songs have been newly written, some of the songs were previously performed by other bands spanning 3 decades, including:
Mister E (mid 1990s, Georgia)
Fortress (early 1990s Georgia)
Matrix** (late 1980s Georgia)
Archer (early 1980s Georgia)
Public Enemy* (late 1970s Georgia)
*Ironically, a more famous Public Enemy band eventually emerged – it was not us.
**Also, a clever series of movies were named The Matrix, our band came before that. So we did not name ourselves Matrix in reference to the movies (to do so would have involved us doing some time travel, and that would have been very clever indeed).
In a few instances previously recorded base analog recordings were used to form the core track of the new recording – either as a scratch track or as a remaining primary music track. This process was done mostly on the first released Atlas Before album, “All Systems Go”. Several of the songs were recording in this manner, i.e. built upon the legacy (and often very crude) analog recording. Most of the other recordings by Atlas Before have been new recordings of newly written songs, or new recordings of older songs that had been performed but had never been recorded.
“It is my goal,” says Denton, “to eventually record and release my entire backlog of previously written songs – minus the really bad ones ; -)
– as well as any new songs we may happen to write along the way.”
“Sadly,” he continues, “I don’t really have the rights to record, nor do I feel comfortable recording and releasing the many songs that were primarily written and copyrighted by my other former bandmates. Those were some of the best, and some true gems.”
Aside from being the primary songwriter behind Atlas Before, Denton also plays many of the instruments on the recordings as is common in the modern multi track recording environment. He also sings many of the vocals.
But Atlas Before is a somewhat communal group of musicians, many of whom contributed to the recordings in terms of vocals, drums, keyboards, guitars and bass.
The remainder of this ‘about’ page is primarily here to give “credit where credit is due” to those contributing musicians as well as noting which songs they performed on during the recording sessions.
David Denton
While David performs many of the tracks in the Atlas Before recordings, he is primarily a songwriter. “I guess I always had an overactive imagination.” He continues, “I learned guitar as way to express my songs way back when I was 14 years old. It is hard to get other people to do your songs, so I had to sing a lot of them myself – even though I don’t really consider myself a singer.”
The songwriting bug never subsided, and although he played in many bands which performed some of his material, he was never able to get many of them recorded as he envision.
In later years, as the engineering aspect of recording became more accessible due to technical advances, he revived the idea of recording some of the better of his works.
“Juggling the sound engineering and playing guitar, rhythm guitar, lead guitars, drum sequencers, lead vocals, backing vocals, keyboards, and then trying to release the stuff online. Whew! It was really a lot. I had to learn lots of new skillsets, and I have not mastered any of them.”
“I always hear that saying in my head – the jack of all trades is the master of none. So, one of the more important lessons I am learning is how to collaborate and bring more talented people into the recording sessions.”
“Still today, it is not about who played what – but it is all about the song. It’s the vibe, the groove, the sound, and the underlying construction of the song and story it tells or the feeling it imparts.”
“Hopefully, this music will bring some joy, amusement or interest to many listeners some day. For now, it is just something I feel compelled to do. These songs are within me, and I must get them out. It is a form of communication I suppose, and we all have this deep need to communicate something. Hopefully something meaningful. Songwriting is one of my primary means of conveying my innermost feelings and ideas.”
RECORDING CREDITS
Chuck Murnan
Chuck is a wonderful soul and a good old friend of mine. He played an incredible drum track for Track H ‘The Ends of Times’. He matched the mood and tone of the song 100%. Always fun to work with, and here’s to more creative work (play) in the future!
Austin Craft
Austin performed a great creative interpretation on the Drums for track A ‘The Recent Future’. Austin is a perceptive and intuitive drummer with a natural feel for the underlying rhythms of music. Thanks so much Austin. We hope to hear more from you on future releases!
NOTE: I am using retro pictures for the musicians below, because that is the era in which their parts were recorded.
Cat Denton
Cat is an incredible vocalist with a dynamic range that is great for both powerful rock and mellow tunes. She recorded outstanding lead and backing vocals on the following songs:
B. The Same Thing Happens to Me Every Day (Sung to Sol) – Co-Lead and backing vocals.
D. Outsiders – Co-Lead and Backing vocals
E. Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t – just some killer backing parts make this song.
H. Crosswinds of Time – All Lead and backing vocals (really powerful!)
K. All Systems Go – Co-Lead and backing vocals
A fantastic guitarist in her on right, she also played some of the Guitars on
B. The Same Thing Happens to Me Every Day.
I forgot to mention in the CD (oops) – she played the kick-a** bass part on:
K. All Systems Go
Keep on Rockin’ Cat!
The Atlanta based band ‘Matrix’
Matrix – A hard rocking band from the 90’s recorded track B (The Same Thing Happens to Me Every Day.) in the basement of a rental house. At that time the song was called ‘Sung to Sol’.
Matrix consisted of
Cat Denton (lead vocals, guitars),
David Denton (guitars vocals),
Jeff Didas (percussion, vocals, guitars),
Mary Gunstone (bass, vocals).
All of the members of Matrix were great song writers and collaborators.
Lars Osley was sound engineer and had a creative influence on the band as well.
More details on these friends and former bandmates are included elsewhere on this page…
Jeff Didas
Jeff Didas is a multi talented musician/songwriter. He played drums on the track B (of All Systems Go). The Same Thing Happens to Me Every Day. He did a fantastic job with all the timing changes in this song!
Jeff is an energetic drummer, with just the right groove for any song. He is spot on with timing and very fun to work with!
Mary Gunstone
Mary was a very intuitive bassist and a mind-blowing songwriter. She was a among the most insightful and creative thinkers I have known.
Sadly, Mary passed away a few years ago. She is greatly missed by her friends, but she lives on in our hearts and in her music.
Mary performed bass on track B of All Systems Go: The Same Thing Happens to Me Every Day.
Cover art – All Systems Go
Natali Snailcat (via Shutterstock)
Because the song ‘The Moon In The Sea’ is a fan favorite, and because that song is central within the story (and there references to the moon in other songs) – we were looking for images of a moon over the sea. The image we found on Shutterstock was perfect. Natali is an incredible artist!
The image is called…
stock-vector-vector-night-cloudy-sky-with-yellow-moon-stars-and-calm-sea-96649336
Cover art – The Recent Future
BRUCE ROLFF
Cover art for the CD ‘The Recent Future’ and other images used on CD disk and back cover are from ‘Time Space’ by Bruce Rolff, via Shutterstock.
Some of the still art used as the cover art for some of the latter songs were compiled using images crerated by the very friendly and attentive Dall-E-3 (AI). Some still images using in the videos were generated by Dall-E-3. Many of the other video clips used were from subscription based video libraries.