In his new album, Eric Alexandrakis will make you discover all the faces of his psyche. He wants us to travel alongside him in the flight of his life. You will find different colors, moods and impressions from dark ambient, a feeling of post rock, to sixties POP, and even alternative heavy metal. His work is very melodious and has a clear approach from progressive rock and the new wave. We can clearly appreciate it as he includes sounds and noises that wouldn’t normally be added to music; and manages to blend them in smoothly. It indeed makes you think of Pink Floyd at points, and Depeche Mode at other times. Voice effects and distortion are used carefully so that even people who are not fans of them can find beauty and purpose. The instruments and electronic effects are as important as the voice, which makes each song a whole and not just lyrics. Terra is to be experienced as a whole experience and with attention. As the album was written in different countries Alexandrakis traveled to, you can occasionally hear sounds from all around the world. The cover also shows some of the places that inspired the album.
None of the songs from Terra can be considered “background music” since they have a decided complexity, although one might not enjoy or appreciate them unless they display an attentive ear. Every song is individual and expresses different feelings; the variety of genres in the album is astonishing. Alexandrakis draws from the complexities of his life in this album: he survived cancer twice; the range of emotions is unmistakable: from innocent happy go lucky songs, to disturbingly sad and spooky ones.
I would like to start talking about a song that really caught my attention for how different it is from the others: I prefer to do my killin’ on Sunday. The discrepancy that the lyrics and the melody give is like seeing the sun during the night. It seems like a happy go lucky song, but in reality it talks about crime and murder. The mismatch is so big that it is comical and we do not take the lyrics seriously. It makes me think of when you make fun of your own intrusive thoughts.
Nonetheless the song that I liked the least, which is Mediterranean Sun seems like a naive summer song. It indeed is interesting musically, but compared to the rest of the songs in the album it is kind of plain. I felt the happiness in it and the desire to dance, but it feels like a superficial song and seems to have less work than the others.
Finally I would love to talk about the feeling of destruction and disorder in Pain but I will talk about Faith in Avarice. There are barely any voices but the feelings are strong. The music keeps shifting from one genre to another just like the whole album. From a church, a park in the rain, to war, applauses and arabic chants, it feels like all the misery in the world is ignored by us by changing the channel on the TV. It does not have the usual structure of typical music. There are no phrases nor any kind of repetition.
Faith in Avarice is like this album, an unexpected experience that keeps your interest as you do not know what kind of song comes next and you might even be surprised during a song itself.
