A is for Atom "Song for You"
After an exploratory journey involving sideman gigs, relocations, and music school, New York transplant Mike Cykoski has shaken off his past and found his future, resurfacing in Brooklyn with a two-EP solo bow of literate, conceptual, thoughtful and playfully-orchestrated modern rock. Ironically Mike’s decision to leave the hired-gun musician hustle came when he netted an audition with pop-rocker Gavin DeGraw.
Mike Cykoski (A is for Atom) has been compared to The National and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, but finds no musician more influential than his friend for many years, and the artist who inspired him to become a musician, Gavin DeGraw.
Mike’s knack for melding emotionally direct lyrics with refined, nuanced compositions stems from the dual influences of his parents—his mother was an Irish folk singer and his father a film-score buff. In music school, as an undergrad and a grad student, he was able to study and readily identify the qualities of film scoring that he was initially attracted to, like the classical structure of these evocative pieces of music.
“I listen to classical music, how operas are written like stories, and my lyric structures appropriate this compositional style where the chorus is an aria and the verse is a recitative,” he explains.
“I listen to classical music, how operas are written like stories, and my lyric structures appropriate this compositional style where the chorus is an aria and the verse is a recitative,” he explains.
