We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Eddie Atom a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Eddie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I come from a family of musicians. My dad was a drummer in the 1980s and through the early 90s for a Spanish rock group and I remember always having drums in the house growing up. I specifically remember my dad owning the clear maple orange Ludwig John Bonham set. We didn’t have much space in our house so most of the time the drums were just kind of stacked on top of one another, unless my dad would take them to band practice. But those times he would set them up to show me and let me play with them – it was something very special for me. Moreover, my grandpa from my mother’s side is a guitarist and he used to play with a trio from El Salvador back in the day, so I picked up a lot of my early guitar lessons and theory from him. My dad’s twin, uncle Tony, also plays guitar and he introduced me to more jazz and blues guitar at a very young age, including the likes of Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, and BB King, among many others.

I remember each family member wanting to teach me music but as a young kid I just really enjoyed banging loudly on drums, so I naturally gravitated towards drums first thanks to my dad and he got my first drum set at age 4. After, around age 10 or 11 I became really interested in guitar and my grandfather gifted me my first acoustic guitar and my uncle gave me my first electric guitar which I still use to this day.

I took some guitar lessons in grade school in both middle and high school but never anything to extensive or rigorous. I also performed trombone for four years with the high school marching back and throughout these years I also performed with a mariachi for about 10 years playing the guitarron (acoustic bass guitar), the vihuela, and lead acoustic guitar. The music theory I learned from my time taking music classes in middle school and high school I carried over to the high school jazz band I performed with and continued to perform in jazz ensemble format when I went to community college. I performed with several jazz ensembles outside of school during this time performing classic jazz standards ranging from Cole Porter, Billy Holiday, Ella Fitsgerald, etc.

When I transferred to UC Santa Barbara, I then picked up the Arabic oud and darbuka (Middle Eastern traditional lute and drum) and performed with the Middle East Ensemble there. I still play the oud to this day, especially since my son really enjoys the sound of it :)

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

First of, I guess I would describe myself as a musician, multi-instrumentalist, guitarist, and music producer under the moniker Eddie Atom. I believe my music and visual product as Eddie Atom are an amalgamation of all the things that have interested me since I was a kid, including space science, the American desert, cosmology, paranormal phenomena, UFOs, alien life, Native American history, and technology. When I was around 8-10 years old, my grandfather gifted me a textbook titled “Heath Earth Science” by Rolland B. Bartholomew – I still own this book to this day. I remember opening the book and being fascinated by the first few pages showing Earth floating in space surrounded by different colors of infrared wavelengths that you typically see in astrophotography. And I remember reading the text next to the image on how our planet and life here is so ephemeral on a grand cosmic level. The existence of Earth and humanity is just a fleeting glimpse. That realization was both scary and beautiful, and still is! This textbook was way too advanced for me at the time but I always carried it everywhere with me because I wanted to learn all of its contents. This was the beginning of my interest and fascination with astronomy and space science and I truly feel like it inspired my imagination even found across all of my music – thank you grandpa.

I have released 6 albums and a handful of singles since I began releasing music as Eddie Atom in 2012. My most recent album titled Attention Game, is an instrumental psychedelic, rock, jazz, electronic album inspired by a wide range of things that somehow all kinda connect to one another somehow. One of the songs was inspired by The Fifth Element, one of my all time favorite movies; another by a space science/cosmology book my grandfather gifted me ages ago when I was around 10 years old; another by the mystical Superstition Mountains in Arizona; and another song was inspired by Art Bell’s radio show Midnight in the Desert, which meant so much to me growing up. These are just some of the inspirations that make up Eddie Atom. I’ve never really been very good with words and I’ve always found music as my best form of expression to things. Things that inspire me usually take some time for them to plant and grow in my brain until I am able to catch those ideas inspired by a particular thing.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

When I receive messages and comments about my music and how much it means to them, whether it’s private DMs or comments on YouTube, that’s the added bonus on top that makes this all worth it. In 2020, I released a cover/remix of the song Letters from the survival horror game Silent Hill and I remember being a little on the fence about releasing it since I completely changed it from the original but I still felt like I had to put it out since I put so much work into it and it came from a genuine place in me. This cover/remix turned out to be one of my most replayed songs on YouTube and I still receive comments and messages about it to this day how much it means to people. Similarly, I released a cover/remix of the classic Nujabes song “Shiki no uta” which features my friend Kaname on vocals and it’s also become somewhat of a hit (for my standards at least) on YouTube and seeing people in the comments section discussing how much my remix means to them is what it’s all about – connecting through music.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I studied English and creative writing at university so I’ve always been inspired by literature since I was very young. I’ve always really resonated with the T.S. Eliot poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” when the speaker repeatedly says “That is not it at all, / That is not what I meant, at all.” This line specifically hit home for me even back when I first read it in college class in 2008 or so because I’ve always felt the same way whenever I’m speaking to someone. Language is so ambiguous and weird and so is sound and music but I’ve always felt that I’ve been better at conveying my thoughts and what I want to say via music. And even then, it’s still a challenge that I never feel like i get completely right. It’s not an easy process to get to the point where I feel completely comfortable and satisfied that a song let alone an entire album feels accurate and true to what I wanted to say. Sometimes I feel like I’m a conductor for something greater than me that I don’t understand really. I think most artists can relate to this feeling – sometimes ideas come to me instantly and I am very happy with them, but other times it can take weeks or months… you just have to dial in to the right frequency.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/eddieatom
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@EddieAtom
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/eddie-atom

Image Credits

Elio Yañez