Having recently celebrated the release of Atlas Takes Aim’s sweepingly atmospheric, excellently produced debut EP, bassist Billie Bundschuh walks us through a portion of Tuesday’s official press release: “Alternative rock band Atlas Takes Aim (previously Until December) has braved legal issues (1), exploding computers (2) and head surgery (3) to bring their first EP, Tuesday, to life. This is the band’s first album in an attempt to release a new CD every four months (4).”
1 “The major one, which is terrible for any band, is that we had to change our name. We were Until December, and we found out there was another band in the ’80s called Until December, and because they released an album under that name, we could not use the name without getting our pants sued off.”
2 “That was sad. It causes a single tear to roll down my face. We had recorded everything, and we were editing it, and my computer died. We had a lot of files on [vocalist/guitarist] Mason [Ian]’s computer, and then his crashed. We borrowed a computer from Joel [Blickenstaff], our drummer, and I killed that one as well. Finally we just broke down and I bought a MacBook Pro, so now we’re good, or at least we hope. But it was dark times.”
3 “The ‘head surgery’ we’re referring to was actually my bass head. It got pretty much mutilated and was no longer working. We had to take it to the bass doctor. It was actually better than before, which was nice. Our drummer did have surgery, though he didn’t have head surgery. He had something with his gall bladder, which was no fun as well.”
4 “Of all the band members, I’m the most chicken about that: ‘What did we just tell people we’re going to do? What if we can’t do that?’ But I’m kind of a worrywart, anyway. Basically the idea is that with the whole digital-music revolution that’s going on right now, people listen to music and buy music a lot differently than they used to. We’ve kind of gone back to the ’60s, where instead of people trying to come up with whole albums, they’d do singles. But instead of aiming for radio play like they did in the ’60s, we’re trying to get on people’s iPods. You hear a song you like, you go to iTunes, you download it. We’re new, and we don’t have the luxury of buying our way into people’s memories, so instead of throwing money into ads and marketing, we’re throwing money into albums.” (myspace.com/atlastakesaim)