What’s your stage name and where are you from?

Ion Alexakis. I am based out of Iowa City, Iowa

What’s the story behind your stage name?

There are some personal ties to the letter “I”. Mostly pulled from a monologue of Plato where Socrates debates with a Rhapsode if creativity and performance is on account of skill & knowledge or divine possession.

Describe your musical journey in three sentences.

Long, ebbs & flows,

Share an interesting experience you had while creating your latest track.

I thoroughly enjoy sound design and pulling from field recordings or obscure places and finding the instrument or music in the loop or tones.

What message do you want to convey through your music?

There’s a lot of introspective dialogue surrounding the day to day challenges of trying to just keep your above water, watching the world crumble around you and surviving through the struggles of our own labor, failures and faults. The Working class struggle trying to break out of the box and not being confined to the role they built for you.

Tell us about a challenge you faced during production and how you overcame it.

With this latest project, I didn’t make music for about a year on account of some workplace confrontation. There became a necessity to unionize, and leading that charge took a toll mentally, as I had to make sure I wasn’t being undermined nor throwing the other employees under the bus.

If you could collaborate with any artist, who would it be and why?

Off the top of my head, Bilal? There’s a certain level of obscurity and abstractness in his work that I think is very rare but is something I constantly am on the hunt for, I appreciate that kind of chaos facto and I find it extremely admirable.

Where do you see your music taking you in the next year?

Ideally, would love to just keep the momentum up and keep creating maybe a small tour.

What’s the next big step for you as an artist?

Full length album

Where can we hear/watch your most recent work?

https://theonlyion.bandcamp.com/album/broken-glass