With song titles such as “Faith in Avarice (World War Zero),” “Satan’s Fried Scapegoat Breakfast” and “Caroline The Hot Flight Attendant,” Grammy Award-nominated artist Eric Alexandrakis takes bold strides in his new and eclectic album TERRA. Alexandrakis was personally responsible for almost all of the vocals, instrumentals and sound mixing. The 28-track album, according to the album’s press release, sounds like “an amalgamation of The Beach Boys meets Pink Floyd meets Duran Duran.”
This description is spot on. Taking inspiration from new wave and The Beatles’ White Album, Alexandrakis no doubt created TERRA with zealous attention. With each song, the emotional undercurrents of the album intensify. “It’s a journey of being withdrawn and suddenly opening up,” Alexandrakis said in an interview with the Collegian.
The album is punctuated with overcharged songs, such as “Pain,” in which Alexandrakis repeatedly screams the word “pain.” In the words of Alexandrakis, “a lot of the lyrics are in code, so they don’t really make sense, but they make sense to me.”
The song titles tell stories of how Alexandrakis has navigated his life, which pair nicely with the theme of travel throughout the album. After two battles with cancer, Alexandrakis has certainly experienced enough to compose two hefty albums about his treatments. His first, I.V. Catatonia: 20 Years As A Two-Time Cancer Survivor, earned him a Grammy nomination in 2019 for Best Spoken Word Album, alongside very notable nominees. TERRA serves as a sequel to that album. Alexandrakis commented, “I didn’t think that there’d be much of an audience interested in it, but when I got the nomination I was like, ‘Well, this is a good shooting board to do it.’”
Alexandrakis has lived in various places, including Greece, New Jersey and London, but has spent most of his life in Miami. He attended the University of Miami and majored in public relations and English literature. Although he yearned to pursue musical theater as a major, Alexandrakis said he valued impressing his parents far more at the time. Ultimately, his love for music persevered, and he got a graduate degree in music business. He then went on to start Minoan Music, a music licensing company.
As the company grew and began working with high-end brands, Alexandrakis realized that he’d rather devote his energy to making music. “It was taking too much time away from my creativity, so I had to scale back a lot of that,” he said. He went back to his roots of a decade in classical piano training, and began his now fruitful career as a musician.
Some of the album’s most entertaining qualities result from its inconsistency. None of the songs are mundane, and Alexandrakis took care to avoid any self-indulgent tropes by making the tunes humorous. For instance, “I Love Me” is about a cult member Alexandrakis encountered in Miami who dressed up as Bono and wore leather pants everyday. Meanwhile, “I Prefer To Do Ma Killin‘ On Sundays” is about a plotting murderer, featuring the lyrics, “Monday stalk the girl next door./ Tuesday bury her under the floor./ Wednesday, Thursday torture a politician./ Friday the morgue I will explore.”
Although the album is a tribute to Alexandrakis’ struggle with cancer, it remains upbeat in terms of rhythm and lyrics. His love for the craft floods through every song, making it impossible to ignore that Alexandrakis is a natural artist.
You can find more about Eric Alexandrakis and his future endeavors on Facebook at ERICSGALEXANDRAKIS or visit his website, ericalexandrakis.com.