Synth Single Review: “Close Your Eyes” by eLxAr

by Karl Magi

eLxAr’s “Close Your Eyes” invokes all of the fantasy of dreams as it flows to life in pink clouds billowing outward, balanced with lights that sparkle like fireflies in twilight. A melodic line that carries hope and gentleness joins with vocals that brush like a tender touch, delivered on Alexandra Chirilà's breath-warmed voice.

Guiding patterns pulse in the foundation before the vocals shine again, fragile and full of dreamy tranquility, evoking the soft-edged quiet that descends before sleep. As crystalline notes add suffusing illumination, the words touch like a warm breeze while Alexandra Chirilà enchants me with her earnest performance.

Images of the escape opened to us in dreaming fill the music with surreal, soothing emotion, like the castles we build from the stuff of dreams. With a childlike wonder, Alexandra Chirilà's spoken-word part moves through the music, so calming and full of magic. A melodic pattern wraps around the vocals, gliding with ethereal light before the song comes to a close.

Inviting the song's subject to "take my hand, come and dream with me," our narrator evokes "neon lights in the midnight sky, colors dance as the stars go by" and silvery waves on a never-ending sea. As they float, free of gravity, they are lost inside her fantasy where "golden echoes call my name" and nothing there will be the same for her.

"Crystal towers and fields of light, they shine" like gentle illusions in silky darkness, with "melodies like electric streams, they sing" and the air filled with "forgotten dreams." She shuts her eyes, but she can still see "a wonderland full of colors surrounding me" that paint the skies with pink and blue as each dream feels utterly new. She adds, "Hold on tight, we can't let it fade."

To end, she says, "This world of lights is ours to make, just turn the music up and let it play, so we'll keep on dreaming every day."