Fort Atlantic

Fort Atlantic is essentially singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and 21st century studio whiz producer Jon Black and drummer Josh Cannon, and the duo integrates laptops, loops, and other digital doodads into an experimental yet decidedly grounded modern pop and rock sound. Black is the center of things, and his vision takes into account classic rock styles even as he makes use of what the digital era affords him as a producer, and the band's tracks make full use of the recording studio as an added instrument. The journey to the Fort Atlantic project began in 2010 when Black, forced by the times to close his small Athens, Georgia label, built a home studio and then spent hours learning the ins and outs of producing in it. Black recorded over 30 some songs in his studio, playing most of the instruments himself, but also making full use of 21st technology in the process. He released three EPs under his own name between 2009 and 2011, but Black began to realize that he had developed a much larger sound than he started with, and drafted in Cannon, and thanks to computers, they were able to perform the complicated sounds of Black's studio recordings live on-stage while still retaining the energy and freedom of a performing rock band. Fort Atlantic was born, built to "balance between heartbeats and hard drives," as Black put it. In November of 2011, Black took his master files to mixer and producer Tom Schick in New York and the pair mixed songs for five days in Studio A at Magic Shop, emerging with a full-length album, the self-titled Fort Atlantic, which was released by Dualtone Records in 2012.