This is not our first encounter with Eric Alexandrakis. We featured ‘Home’ almost two years ago, a track that has little to do with the piece at hand today, an avant-garde, experimental offering that serves as an audio asset for an art exhibition. The recipient of two Grammy nominations, Alexandrakis is a celebrated producer and composer, a talented creative who boasts an absolutely crazy list of collaborators: from John Malkovich to Yoko Ono, passing through Duran Duran’s John Taylor.
‘Life Is Better Live’ is the piece that has now caught our attention. It’s an ambient-coded, unconventional offering, a track that blends fragments of melodic matter with field recordings and noisy samples. Using sounds as a guiding force, Alexandrakis delivers a striking narrative, one that seeks to recreate the chaotic imprint of our present reality. The record acts as soundtrack to a short film directed by renowned visual artist Sandro Miller, which is part of a multimedia exhibit celebrating the 50th anniversary of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.
Delving deeper into the creative ethos that propels the record, we are told: “The track itself is an homage to avant-garde composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage. It represents the chaos of the outside, and has a very unique sound to it.” If anyone is keen to attend the exhibit, ‘Steppenwolf 50: Through the Eye of Sandro Miller’ takes place at the beautiful Highland Park Arts Centre (Illinois) from May 8 to June 14.
Recommended! Discover ‘Life Is Better Live’ now: