Eric Alexandrakis has never been an artist to play it safe and Life Is Better Live makes that clear from the beginning. The single is a collaboration with renowned visual artist Sandro Miller and is the official soundtrack to a short film that anchors “Steppenwolf 50: Through the Eye of Sandro Miller,” a multimedia exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of Chicago’s legendary Steppenwolf Theatre Company, currently on display at the Highland Park Arts Center. It is the kind of art crossover that doesn't usually happen by accident.
Shot on the gorgeous shores of Okanagan Lake in British Columbia, Canada, the single carries a geographic and atmospheric weight that feels entirely deliberate. The landscape here appears to bleed straight into the sound expansive, restless and alive with tension, with Alexandrakis drawing creative energy from his surroundings for a long time. Alexandrakis and Brian Leitner mix “Life Is Better Live” to move between structured composition and deliberate sonic unpredictability in ways that feel both disciplined and free.
The single is a tribute to avant-garde pioneers Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, two figures who redefined how we even define music in the 20th century. Instead of merely invoking these icons, Alexandrakis channels their spirit into something that feels very much of the now a hybrid of sound design and musical composition that refuses to sit still. "The chaos outside," he writes of the work, a phrase that does serious work here, capturing the emotional texture of a world in constant motion.
That ambition makes more sense when you look at the exhibition it lives inside. “Steppenwolf 50: Through the Eye of Sandro Miller” features over 100 emotional portraits from Sandro’s more than two decades working with the Steppenwolf Ensemble, a body of work that is part documentation and part devotion. Alexandrakis’s composition doesn’t compete with those images; it magnifies them, providing a sonic counterpart to visual emotion that feels both raw and considered.
It’s worth knowing the entire creative pedigree behind this release. Alexandrakis has collaborated with John Malkovich, David Lynch, Yoko Ono, Dolores O’Riordan, and members of The Cure, The Smiths and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, among others. Discovered by John Taylor of Duran Duran and credited as the producer of the first digitally watermarked CD, Alexandrakis has built a career of extraordinary collaboration. Each project appears to build upon, rather than to repeat, his creative vocabulary.
As is the case with “Life Is Better Live,” Alexandrakis continues to be one of the most genuinely curious artists working today. This is a single that deserves to be part of a serious artistic exhibition. Not as background texture, but as a statement in itself. We are here for all that it means.
0 Comments